ERCOT: Changeover In Transmission Under Oncor, InfraREIT M&A Should Not Occur During Summer
March 06,2019
ERCOT filed testimony in a Texas PUC proceeding examining the previously reported proposed acquisition of InfraREIT by Oncor, and related transactions, in which ERCOT said that any change in ownership and operation of transmission assets due to the transactions, in terms of being updated in ERCOT's production Network Operations Model, should not occur during this summer
ERCOT said in testimony that it would prefer to implement the changeover of ownership and/or operatorship of the transmission equipment on June 5, 2019.
To the extent such date cannot be met, ERCOT said that the change should not occur until September 18, 2019
"ERCOT expects that the ERCOT System could experience record high Load in the
coming summer. This presents challenges for the operators in the ERCOT control
room. For example, in order to help deal with the expected challenges of this
summer, ERCOT has already issued a notice to Transmission Service Providers
(TSPs) restricting the types of outages that will be permitted to be taken during
ERCOT' s 'summer restriction window' of May 15, 2019 to September 15, 2019.
The operational burdens associated with ERCOT s implementation of the planned
changeover of Oncor's and Sharyland's transmission assets, as I describe later in
my testimony, could place additional pressures on the ERCOT System and ERCOT
operators during this critical time," a witness for ERCOT said
"To the
extent the Commission may wish to allow for the possibility of the changeover
occurring during Summer 2019, however, it would be important for ERCOT to be
able to retain the discretion to decline to implement the transition during that time,
if ERCOT believed that doing so would put the reliability of the ERCOT System at
risk," ERCOT said