The Uniqueness of a Municipal Utility’s Resiliency Program and How it fits into the ERCOT Competitive Wholesale Market.

Julie Black is currently an Energy Development Program Manager at Austin Energy for the Resiliency as a Service Program. This program is designed to satisfy legislative requirements and allow commercial and industrial customers to work with vendor energy companies to install large backup generators on site. These backup generators activate during grid outages and are also capable of Austin Energy dispatch during elevated ERCOT wholesale market prices or during anticipated ERCOT 4CP intervals. Prior to this role, Julie worked as an Economist in Austin Energy’s Data Analytics and Business Intelligence department where she did load shape and geo/demographic analysis. Before working at Austin Energy, she was a wholesale market economist and rate analyst at the Public Utility Commission of Texas. She also worked one session as a Legislative Aide for the Texas House of Representatives. She has an undergraduate degree in Economics and Philosophy from Columbia University of New York and a master’s degree in economics at the University of Alabama. 

When the Texas electricity markets were restructured in the late 1990s and early 2000s, municipal utilities had the option of opting out of retail competition. On the wholesale side, however, even municipal utilities that opted out of retail competition have to schedule with ERCOT, the Independent System Operator, how they plan to buy and sell energy in the ERCOT competitive wholesale market. As such, municipal utilities such as Austin Energy are exposed to the pricing and transmission costs associated with the ERCOT competitive wholesale market. Following Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, Senate Bill 398 of the 87th Texas Legislative session passed that requires municipal utilities to allow customers in the grocery store and food supply chain to partner with private generation companies, if they so choose, to install large backup generators that can provide full backup during a grid outage, yet also interconnect with the municipal utilities’ distribution grid and provide services to the ERCOT wholesale market. Austin Energy designed the Resiliency as a Service program to satisfy that legislation.