At issue is the Firm Fuel Supply Service, an ERCOT reliability service mandated by the Texas Legislature.
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Representatives for two city groups — the Steering Committee of Cities Served by Oncor and the Texas Coalition for Affordable Power — have urged the PUC to maintain current eligibility criteria for an important post-Winter Storm Uri reliability initiative.
At issue is the Firm Fuel Supply Service, an ERCOT reliability service mandated by the 87th Texas Legislature in response to the statewide winter storm outages of 2021. Under current rules, the FFSS provides market rewards to generators with fuel located onsite. The PUC, however, has proposed expanding FFSS eligibility to include generators with off-site natural gas resources and a related Firm Gas Storage Agreement.
In comments filed Aug. 14 with the PUC, OCSC and TCAP urged the agency to maintain the current FFSS structure. The city groups made two principal arguments to support their recommendations. First, expanded FFSS eligibility conflicts with ERCOT’s competitive market design. Second, expanded FFSS eligibility is inconsistent with efforts to address Winter Storm Uri related reliability issues.
More specifically, the city groups noted that natural gas delivery disruptions largely caused Winter Storm Uri power outages. The commission’s proposed FFSS expansion, however, seeks to incentivize additional off-site natural gas storage arrangements—arrangements subject to the same delivery disruptions.
The commission will now consider the comments of cities and other stakeholders before proposing an updated FFSS rule.