Hancock offers amendment promoting ancillary services during emergencies

By Bree Gonzales (this article was originally published in the Lone Star Standard)

State Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills) has offered an amendment to Senate Bill 3, which provides that renewable energy sources must fund reliable ancillary services in the event that they are unable to meet demand.

Hancock, who also filed SB 1278, which promotes ancillary services to back up generation for intermittent resources, suggested to include a provision in SB 3. This would require the purchase of the ancillary services, which should be directed by the Public Utility Commission of Texas.  

The amendment offered states, “The commission shall require intermittent generation resources in the ERCOT power region to purchase ancillary services and replacement power sufficient to manage net load variability.”

The amendment, which was read and adopted is similar to Hancock’s SB 1278, will help drive grid reliability, particularly under emergency situations.

“What’s contributing is that we’re relying on wind and the turbines are frozen as well as the fact that we’re relying on solar and there’s no sun shining,” Energy Alliance Policy Director Bill Peacock told the Lone Star Standard in February. “We could have a reliable natural gas backup in place but we don’t. All three of those are related to the renewable energy policies in Texas and in the United States.”

Wind and solar generation, as well as natural gas, were not reliable when Texas experienced a statewide blackout in February. Peacock added that tax abatements would worsen the variability in the grid.

“[The] 313 abatements overall take money from average taxpayers and give it to big corporations so they end up subsidizing big corporations,” Peacock told Austin News in February. “What big corporations are not paying in taxes, average Texans are. It’s just going to continue to drive unreliability and instability in the Texas electric grid and it’s going to get more expensive to deal with. The worst-case scenario is we’re going to see blackout situations as there have been in California.”

SB3 is a measure filed by Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) and would direct the Public Utility Commission to craft a statewide power outage alert network.