The Public Utility Commission of Texas has rejected a proposal to retroactively reverse the market pricing for electricity that resulted in ERCOT overcharging the Texas electricity market by US$16 billion during the Texas Freeze in February. At a hearing on Friday, the PUC of Texas decided that it would not correct retroactively the overcharge with which the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, charged power companies in the state at $9,000 per megawatt hour (MWh) for a period of 32 hours during the worst of the winter storm in the state. Power companies passed on that spike in prices to consumers, some of whom received astronomically high electricity bills. Last week, Potomac Economics, as the Independent Market Monitor (IMM) for the Public Utility Commission of Texas, said that ERCOT exceeded the mandate of the Commission by continuing to set process at the value of lost load (VOLL) long after […]