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Alaina Zermeno

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Prior to joining the firm’s Energy & Natural Resources group, Alaina worked in the Oversight & Enforcement Division (O&E) and in the Legal Division of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), representing PUCT before the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) in various matters, including enforcement, as well as in hearings before PUCT administrative law judges. As part of her O&E role, she initiated Commission investigations into regulated entities that violated statute and Commission rules. She also worked in tandem with the Attorney General’s office by referring violations for civil enforcement and serving as a resource for O&E-referred matters. Clients value Alaina’s unique experience and knowledge of regulatory matters as she guides them in navigating permits, power purchase agreements, and shared utility agreements within and beyond Texas.

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On June 8, 2022, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (“Commission”) filed a memo from its Infrastructure Division requesting that electric utilities, power generation companies, municipally owned utilities, and electric cooperatives (“Entities”) operating outside of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (“ERCOT”) provide to Commission Staff unredacted copies of their Emergency Operations Plans (“EOP”). Entities that operate both outside of the ERCOT power region and in the ERCOT power region, and entities that operate solely in the ERCOT power region and have already provided an unredacted EOP to ERCOT (as required by the Emergency Operations Plan rule (16 TAC §25.53), are not required to provide the Staff an unredacted EOP.…
Continue Reading Public Utility Commission Requests Unredacted Emergency Operations Plans From All Applicable Entities by June 24, 2022

During the 87th regular legislative session, the Texas Legislature passed several bills to address energy-related issues resulting from Winter Storm Uri. Together, the legislation required an overhaul of the ERCOT board of directors, expanded the Public Utility Commission of Texas (“PUCT”) from three to five members, imposed weatherization requirements on generation and transmission assets in ERCOT and on certain components of natural gas infrastructure, and directed a redesign of the ERCOT market to ensure grid reliability. As of September 1st , all of these laws were effective.
Continue Reading Legislative Check-In on Energy-Related Mandates from the 87th Regular Session

After Winter Storm Uri devastated the ERCOT grid, calls for industry reform rang out across the state of Texas. For the past few months, public hearings and floor debates have considered wide-ranging proposals to harden the ERCOT system against extreme weather events and address the financial consequences of the storm. The Legislature considered numerous bills dealing with issues such as energy and ancillary services repricing, market rules and price formation, generation weatherization, ERCOT and Texas Public Utility Commission (“PUCT”) reform, debt securitization, and the appropriate role and accountability of renewable resources in securing reliability of the grid. Below we provide an overview of the most significant energy legislation proposed during the recent Texas legislative session, both related and unrelated to Winter Storm Uri fallout. The Legislature passed bills that will affect all segments of the Texas energy economy, which collectively will prompt significant change in the years ahead. We have described bills that “passed” as those that have been enrolled or have already been signed into law by the Governor (Bills that have an asterisk in this article have been signed by the Governor.). We note that the veto period extends for 20 days post-session, which ended May 31st , so as of this writing it remains possible the Governor may veto some of these bills, though we have no indication he intends to do so. We will update this post after the veto period expires to note any such vetoes.
Continue Reading A Legislative Session in Review: Taking a Look at Key Energy Bills that Did (and Did Not) Pass During the 87th Regular Session

Electric powerlines

In the wake of winter storm Uri, ERCOT market participants are grappling with the resulting financial fallout. Many are now familiar with actions the Texas Public Utility Commission took during the February weather event with the intent to bring and maintain as much generation online as possible – notably ordering ERCOT to implement a temporary adjustment to the scarcity pricing mechanism designed to result in real time prices reaching the system-wide high offer cap at the statutory maximum of $9,000/mWh during the height of the generation forced outages.

Now, more than two months removed from the storm, the resulting financial impacts are having serious repercussions across the ERCOT market. Several retail electric providers have filed for bankruptcy, lawsuits are underway against a wide swath of market participants and regulators (ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission, generators, REPs, gas utilities, etc.), and countless market participants are faced with paying record-high bills for a range of reasons, including the need to procure energy in the real-time market during scarcity conditions, to obtain high priced gas supplies, to cover positions when their resources incurred outages, or exposure to uplift of default amounts owed to ERCOT. Complicating that, ERCOT has failed to pay many who did perform during the storm due to the short payment of some market participants, which means those who performed may not soon realize revenue associated with that performance. Additionally, the higher prices for power and ancillary services prompted ERCOT to substantially increase Counter-Party collateral requirements. Last month, the Public Utility Commission issued an order in Docket 51812 extending the deadline to dispute ERCOT invoices related to the winter event from 10 business days (under the current ERCOT Protocols) to six months. Since this order, the Commission has taken no additional action to address issues related to settlement invoices resulting from the storm.
Continue Reading ERCOT Unveils Plan for Invoicing Default Uplift Charges