ERCOT said Dec. 12 it has completed the largest single transfer of customers in its history with the final migration of Lubbock Power & Light (LP&L) customers from SPP.

The city of Lubbock joins San Antonio and Austin as municipalities in ERCOT’s competitive retail market. The more than 107,000 LP&L customers will be able to begin choosing their power providers in January.

That is a big change from the West Texas city’s previous experience with “alley-by-alley” competition that existed until 2010, said Matt Rose, LP&L’s public affairs and government relations manager, this year.

During the Gulf Coast Power Association’s fall conference in October, Rose recalled when LP&L and Xcel Energy subsidiary Southwestern Public Service (SPS) both had distribution facilities on either side of alleys.

“Depending on who you wanted to go with, you chose and then you got hooked up on one side in the alley or the other,” he said.

In 2010, LP&L bought SPS’ infrastructure and LP&L became more of a traditional municipality, serving all the customers in its footprint as a vertically integrated utility. Faced with spending about $700 million to build more generation, LP&L reached a decision point in 2014.

“We said, ‘We have a choice. We can build a power plant, stay in the Southwest Power Pool and operate as we have the past 100 years. Or we can take a look outside Lubbock.’ We could see that these transmission lines for ERCOT are really one county north, east and south of us,” Rose said, alluding to ERCOT’s transmission system.

LP&L said in 2015 it intended to transfer its load to ERCOT, beginning a process that culminated with the Public Utility Commission’s approval three years later. The process involved paying SPS $77.5 million for early termination of a power contract that would have cost the utility more than $17 million a year through 2044. (See Texas PUC OKs Sempra-Oncor Deal, LP&L Transfer.)

The utility successfully transitioned 70% of its load to ERCOT in 2021. The remaining 30% was moved into ERCOT in what LP&L said was a “seamless migration,” beginning early Dec. 9 and concluding midmorning Dec. 11.

Now, rather than choosing a provider on one side of the alley or the other, LP&L consumers can select from more than 85 retail providers during a six-week “shopping” window that begins Jan. 5. The utility then will begin migrating the customers to their chosen providers in March and become a transmission and distribution entity.

“This has been an interesting and a fun experience, but Lubbock was able to do this because Lubbock is uniquely situated,” Rose said. “We were ending all business in the Southwest Power Pool in order to move to ERCOT, and that allowed us the liberty to go pursue this.”