ERCOT’s request for must-run alternatives (MRAs) for cost-effective solutions to the congestion problems in San Antonio did not receive any responses by a Dec. 30 deadline, putting the solicitation in serious doubt.
The Texas grid operator said Dec. 31 that given the absence of questions about its request for proposals, it will not post answers or further amendments to the solicitation or other related documents by the Jan. 8 deadline. It will issue a market notice on that date if it determines an amended request is necessary.
A previous solicitation for an MRA to the Braunig units resulted in one response: a 200-MW, multihour energy storage resource.
ERCOT is seeking a more cost-effective option than entering into an agreement to use the mobile generators CenterPoint Energy has offered or committing CPS Energy’s Braunig Units 1 and 2 under a reliability-must-run (RMR) contract. (See “ERCOT to Pursue Braunig MRAs,” Texas PUC Shelves PCM Design Over Lack of Benefits.)
Staff are pursuing an RMR contract, ERCOT’s first since 2016, with Braunig’s largest gas resource, Unit 3. The resource has a 412-MW maximum summer rating. Units 1 and 2 have a combined summer rating of 392 MW.
CPS, San Antonio’s municipal utility, told ERCOT last year that it planned to retire the three gas units, which date back to the 1960s, in March 2025. However, the grid operator said the plant’s units were needed for reliability. (See ERCOT Evaluating RMR, MRA Options for CPS Plant.)
ERCOT says the RMR units will be important in addressing the South Texas export interconnection reliability operating limits (IROLs) staff established last year. Staff’s analysis revealed that under certain conditions, such as when high system demand coincides with an outage of a major transmission line or one or more generation units, lines that deliver power from South Texas into San Antonio could be overloaded and possibly lead to cascading outages.
ERCOT has been in discussions with CPS, CenterPoint and Life Cycle Power over moving 15 large generators and their 450 MW of capacity from Houston to distribution sites in the San Antonio area. The generators, which range between 27 and 32 MW, would provide a less expensive alternative to the $56 million that CPS says it will take to overhaul and continue running Braunig’s other two units.
PUC Opens Application for Completion Bonuses
The Texas Public Utility Commission began accepting applications on Jan. 1 for completion bonuses of dispatchable, or thermal, energy under the Texas Energy Fund (TEF).
The fund’s Completion Bonus Grant Program provides performance-based grants to qualifying projects for the construction of new dispatchable generating facilities in ERCOT or the addition of new dispatchable units at existing facilities in the grid operator’s territory. Qualifying projects will add at least 100 MW of new dispatchable generation capacity to the ERCOT grid, the PUC said.
The TEF’s In-ERCOT Generation Loan Program has received 18 applications for 9.72 GW of potential new generation seeking $5.34 billion in loans. The Texas legislature has allocated $5 billion to the fund.
The fund was established by state law and approved by voters in 2023. It offers a low-interest (3%) loan and grant program of up to $7.2 billion for dispatchable generation, alongside three other separate programs.
