As part of a commitment to help meet the State of Texas' immediate energy needs, CenterPoint Energy welcomed the approval by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) Board to move ahead with finalizing CenterPoint's proposal to utilize 15 large emergency generation units to help address the state's generation shortfall concerns.
Under its proposal, CenterPoint will make no revenue or profit from these 15 units while helping ERCOT and the State of Texas. CenterPoint's 2.8 million Greater Houston-area electric customers will also benefit from the arrangement by seeing lower monthly bills related to this transaction by 2027.
As outlined before the ERCOT Board, and subject to finalization of mutually agreed upon documentation among the relevant parties, including ERCOT and the service provider/operator of the emergency generation units, CenterPoint will send the 15 large emergency generation units to the San Antonio area by summer 2025, for up to two years, which will help the state and ERCOT offset a projected energy shortfall.
As an outcome of this proposal, CenterPoint would make its Houston Electric customers whole for the portion of the units that they have been billed for to date through a combination of rate reductions and foregoing other costs (such as some 2024 storm and vegetation management costs).
The cost of these large temporary generation units will be removed from CenterPoint's Houston Electric rates once they leave the CenterPoint service area in the coming months. The average Houston Electric customer (who uses 1,000 kWh/month) will see a reduction in bills of an estimated $2/month related to this transaction by 2027.
The 15 units (ranging from 27MW to 32MW) can each power approximately 30,000 homes and were originally acquired to help protect customers against the impacts of extreme weather like Winter Storm Uri.
"All of us at CenterPoint work hard every day to find solutions that benefit our many different stakeholders. This proposal is an unprecedented contribution of value to the state at a key inflection point in the Texas energy market. This unique, commonsense, Texas-driven solution will reduce our customers' electric bills and address the state's projected power needs for the next few years. We want to especially thank the ERCOT board, and all our state and local elected leaders for their strong support as we continue to work together to finalize this smart and forward-looking solution that provides bill relief to our customers while helping meet the ever-growing energy needs of our vibrant Texas economy," said Jason Wells, President and Chief Executive Officer of CenterPoint Energy.
