ERCOT overcharged power buyers by $16 billion amid calamity, monitor says
The operators of the Texas power grid overcharged wholesale electricity customers by $16 billion due to a pricing error during the weather emergency last month that triggered extended blackouts and left more than 4 million Texans shivering amid subfreezing temperatures, a monitor reports.
Potomac Economics, a Virginia-based firm that's paid to provide an arm's-length assessment of the Texas grid, is recommending that the overcharges billed to retail electric providers and others be reversed.
The overcharges occurred because the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid and is commonly known as ERCOT, left wholesale prices at the maximum level allowable $9,000 per megawatt hour for about a day and a half too long during the emergency, Potomac said in a letter to state regulators Thursday.
The overcharges represent only a part of the costs racked up during the calamity by generators, distributors and retailers of electricity, however.
According to Potomac, real-time market costs on the Texas grid totaled about $47 billion from Feb. 14-19 because of the power outages and sky-high wholesale prices compared with about $10 billion in real-time market costs for all of 2020.
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https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/03/04/ercot-pricing-error-spurred-16-b-grid-overcharges-monitor-says/4582419001/
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Id like to see the results from another audit. The whole situation makes me livid.