Statewide Electric Grid

Austin Energy is a member of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). ERCOT is one of 10 regional reliability councils in North America. It is an independent, not-for-profit organization.

ERCOT's Role
ERCOT administers and is responsible for the reliability of the state’s power grid.

ERCOT:
	Serves about 80% of Texas
	Oversees 70,000 megawatts of generation
	Manages 37,000 miles of transmission lines

Because Austin Energy represents 4% of the statewide generation load, it pays 4% of ERCOT’s costs to operate the statewide grid.

Deregulation in Texas
Retail electric deregulation in Texas began in 2002. ERCOT now facilitates the operation of the retail competitive market by:

	Ensuring all generators have equal access to the statewide electric grid.
	Implementing measures that manage transmission congestion.

Austin Energy is not participating in retail deregulation. Austin Energy does:

	Participate in the ERCOT wholesale market.
	Take part in balancing power needs for the statewide grid.
	Contract to buy or sell power from other parties.

Austin Energy’s Qualified Scheduling Entity (QSE) is the control center for Austin Energy in:

	Scheduling load
	Determining what generation we run at what time
	Bidding excess energy into the market

During the first year of deregulation, the QSE settled more than 7.6 million transactions representing $158 million. The ERCOT market settles energy transactions every 15 minutes, or 96 times a day.