Publicly owned utilities that were able to keep their generators online during the recent crisis on the Texas power grid — such as Austin Energy and the Lower Colorado River Authority — would be hit hard financially if overcharges for wholesale electricity racked up amid the emergency are reversed, the lone remaining member of the state's Public Utility Commission said Thursday.
Arthur D'Andrea, who chairs the now single-member commission, also revised the estimated size of the overcharges downward by a huge amount during testimony before a state legislative committee — from $16 billion to $3.2 billion.
Still, he told members of the House State Affairs Committee that executives of the LCRA told him that "it would bankrupt them" if some recommendations that lawmakers are considering for retroactively repricing wholesale power are enacted.
More: ERCOT overcharged power buyers by $16 billion amid calamity, monitor says
D'Andrea backtracked during the hearing a short time later, however, after LCRA general manager Phil Wilson immediately issued a written statement saying that "at no time have I or any member of my staff ever suggested to Chairman D’Andrea that repricing would bankrupt LCRA.”
D'Andrea told the committee that he may have misheard Wilson's comments to him.
In his written statement, Wilson said he told D'Andrea that repricing some ancillary service fees could "substantially harm" LCRA, but not repricing of the wholesale overcharges overall.
D'Andrea said the state's independent grid monitor, which issued the original estimate of $16 billion in overcharges, was involved in the downward revision to $3.2 billion.
Some state lawmakers voiced skepticism regarding the new estimate for the overcharges.
“It doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence when they can come up with $16 billion two weeks ago and $3.2 billion now," one lawmaker told D'Andrea.
The overcharges occurred because the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state's power grid and is commonly known as ERCOT, kept wholesale prices at the maximum level allowable — $9,000 per megawatt hour — for too long during last month's crisis, the state's independent grid monitor has said. ERCOT should have stopped intervening sooner because the power crisis was waning and instead let supply and demand determine pricing, the grid monitor said.
Two members of the three-member Public Utility Commission have resigned over the past two weeks.
