Texas House passes bill to boost power grid protection

Texas House Passes Legislation to Enhance Grid Reliability

The Texas House has passed a proposal to grant regulators increased oversight of electric generation and transmission, as well as equip the state power grid's manager with tools to better forecast energy needs. The legislation, Senate Bill 6, is now headed back to the Senate to review the House's changes.

According to Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, who sponsored the bill in the House, the legislation aims to reduce the risk of widespread outages during peak demand times by allowing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to cut power to large-scale consumers during an emergency. King stated:
"You certainly don't want large-load customers that sometimes are data-centered for military operations, or whatever, to just be without power when there's an emergency."

The bill focuses on four main objectives:

• Ensuring that transmission costs are properly allocated
• Establishing measures to protect grid reliability
• Promoting transparency and credibility in load forecasting
• Protecting residential customers from outages by requiring large loads to share the load-shed obligation during shortages

In March, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas told a congressional committee that Texas set an all-time peak demand record of 85,508 gigawatts in the summer of 2023. Vegas noted that the state will likely break this record soon due to large-scale consumers bringing their operations to Texas, stating:
"Texas has become a magnet for industries that require increasing amounts of electricity, from semiconductor plants to data centers, broad industrial growth and large-scale industrial electrification in the Permian Basin."

The House and Senate versions of SB 6 differ, so unless the Senate agrees with the House's changes, a conference committee will need to reconcile the two versions into a final bill.