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(Bloomberg) — Major Texas power generators, including NRG Energy Inc. and Vista Corp. of raking in $500 million in new revenue after a rule change vote by the state’s network operator’s key stakeholder group.
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On Monday, members of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Texas Electrical Reliability Board voted to set price caps for energy costs when reserves fall below a key threshold. While the change will only be triggered about 8% of the time based on current conditions, it’s enough to raise consumers’ costs by half a billion dollars annually.
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Ercot’s board and facilities committee could vote as early as next week to approve the measure.
The move is part of a larger Texas effort to improve the electric grid after its fatal failure in 2021. Republican state lawmakers have laid out plans to overhaul a grid increasingly reliant on renewable energy with fossil fuel stations, and regulators are working to make Texas more compelling as a place to build natural gas stations. . Of the $500 million in increased revenue, about 80% will go toward what Irkut called “distributable resources,” or power generation that can be called upon in real time such as natural gas, coal and nuclear, according to a presentation Monday.
- Under the proposal, price floors would be set at $10 to $20 per megawatt hour when real-time reserves fall below 7,000 megawatts.
- Twenty-one, or 78%, Ercot Technical Advisory Committee members voted for the measure
Read more: Texas plan to avert blackouts could cost $18 billion