Per Paul Ring at Energy Choice Matters, ERCOT is forecasting healthier generation reserves for 2014 and beyond, which has been a major concern facing Texas for the past couple years. Anyone reading this blog knows that Texas has been slipping closer and closer to the accepted Reserve Margin, or the minimum amount of accepted generation ahead of the estimated electricity needs of the entire state for some years now. In fact, the vote to raise the Market Cap from 3,000 to 9,000 over the next few years is a direct response to the dwindling reserve margins. The hope was that by increasing the market cap during peak demand times, the state would be able to lure new investments in energy generation to Texas. Texas, because of massive population growth and industrial growth, has been ticking closer to the point where generation assets become dangerously low and unfortunately no new private industries have invested in new plants because they aren’t sure they’ll see the profit they’d like from new natural-gas fired plants.
The article from ERCOT, while it sounds rosy, is a bit misleading. Texas is still getting dangerously close to their Reserve Margin, however forecasts beyond 2013 aren’t AS LOW as they were back in May. So things are just slightly improved in what is still a fairly grim landscape. Nonetheless, any new is good news for the Texas electricity market at this point. Additionally, the report apparently didn’t include some new generation projects that are set to go online in 2015, which might add as much as 2,000 megawatts to the grid, so thing might be slightly rosier still. But that doesn’t mean Texas doesn’t still need new investment in generation in a VERY bad way.