The ERCOT Board Selection Committee has engaged an executive search firm to scour the state for eight independent directors to sit on the grid operator’s reconstituted governing board, the Public Utility Commission of Texas said Monday.

The committee, comprising three members handpicked by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan, chose Chicago-based Heidrick & Struggles to conduct the search. The firm, as directed by new legislation, will look to fill the vacancies with Texans with executive-level experience in finance, business, engineering (including electrical engineering), trading, risk management, law or electric market design.

The Texas legislature changed the board’s composition after the devastation of February’s winter storm left Texans outraged that the five previous independent directors lived out of state. (See ERCOT Chair, 4 Directors to Resign.)

The new independent directors will replace the market participant representatives who currently sit on the board and, along with the Office of Public Utility Counsel, have voting rights. The ERCOT CEO and PUC chairman will fill out the 11-person board.

Speaking Monday during the Gulf Coast Power Association’s virtual fall conference, interim ERCOT CEO Brad Jones said he knows of only two individuals who have been mentioned as potential board members.

“I would be thrilled to have both of them on the board. I’m very encouraged by those two names,” he said.

Buc-ees founder Arch “Beaver” Aplin is one of the ERCOT Board Selection Committee’s three members. | Mays Business SchoolThe board’s next meeting is Oct. 12, making it unlikely all eight independent directors will be seated by then.

State legislation signed into law earlier this year created a three-person, uncompensated selection committee. They are Arch “Beaver” Aplin, CEO of the Buc-ee’s convenience store chain and chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission; G. Brint Ryan, former chairman of the University of North Texas System Board of Regents and CEO of a global tax consulting firm; and attorney Bill Jones, chairman emeritus of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Aplin, a backer of Republican interests, was named to the committee by Abbott. According to Transparency USA, a database that discloses money in state politics, Aplin has donated between $1,000 and $375,000 to 19 GOP political action committees since 2015, including just over $1 million to Abbott.