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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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I’d like to see the results from another audit. The whole situation makes me livid.
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