Covering high-voltage infrastructure building Texas's power future -- new projects, ERCOT planning, and regulatory battles.
Two Panhandle landowners told state regulators on Sept. 14 that a power line projected to cost as much as $1.08 billion should not be built across Texas farmland at all, because the electricity demand driving it sits across the state line in New Mexico.
The chairman of the agency that regulates Texas utilities wants two of the state's biggest proposed power lines sent back to the judges who just recommended rejecting them — a step that would keep the projects alive but push a decision months further out for landowners across 23 counties.
A rancher who is representing himself in one of the biggest transmission cases in Texas history told state utility regulators on Sept. 5 that if they approve two enormous power lines over their own judges' recommendation, landowners will take them to court.
Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority's transmission arm filed an 81-page rebuttal Sept. 2 asking Texas utility regulators to overrule two administrative judges who recommended denying a pair of 765,000-volt power lines across Central and West Texas, arguing the judges leaned on "lay witness testimony" over the state grid operator's engineering and that denying the lines would leave Far West Texas facing forced outages of more than 2,000 megawatts.
Texas utility regulators approved the state’s first 765,000-volt transmission lines on Aug. 28, clearing Oncor to build 424 miles of them across 30 counties, from near Glen Rose to the New Mexico line, at a cost of about $3.9 billion — and in the same orders they threw out an administrative law judges’ finding that the utility had failed to give some landowners the notice the rules require.
The Texas Oil & Gas Association said its president, Todd Staples, supports landowner protections that the Public Utility Commission of Texas attached to its approval of two proposals for decision tied to the Permian Basin Reliability Plan.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an amicus curiae brief before the State Office of Administrative Hearings supporting a motion to defer a determination of need on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas' 765-kilovolt transmission line buildout, his office announced Aug. 28.
The Texas Oil & Gas Association warned that a State Office of Administrative Hearings recommendation to set aside additional transmission infrastructure in West Texas would put the reliability of the state's electric grid at risk, according to an Aug. 24 statement from TXOGA President Todd Staples.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas called a special meeting Aug. 21 for the sole purpose of taking up two of the giant power lines proposed to carry electricity out of the Permian Basin, moved it into a hotel ballroom to hold the crowd, heard argument from the parties, and then approved nothing, denied nothing and paused nothing.
Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples told a Texas House committee that West Texas needs new electric generation and transmission capacity now, warning that delaying the buildout will only raise its eventual cost.
Three state administrative law judges recommended on Aug. 20 that Texas regulators refuse to let Oncor Electric Delivery Company and LCRA Transmission Services Corporation build the Bell County East-to-Big Hill 765,000-volt transmission line, and recommended the same result for the companion line from Big Hill to Sand Lake.
In order to speed up the development of grid infrastructure, the Legislature cut the clock on transmission permits from a year to 180 days.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has called a special meeting for Aug. 21 devoted entirely to two of the giant power lines proposed to carry electricity out of the Permian Basin, and has moved it out of its own hearing room to a hotel ballroom across town.
The chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas has called his fellow commissioners and the state's grid operator into a special open meeting this Friday, Aug. 14, to talk through the policy questions hanging over the Permian Basin power-line buildout — while promising that no final decision on the Howard-Solstice line, the biggest piece of that buildout, will be made in the room.