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House Bill 1567 |
House Author: Ritter et al. |
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Effective: 6-18-05 |
Senate Sponsor: Williams |
The Texas electricity grid includes multiple regional entities responsible for ensuring the reliability of power supply systems. Two of those are the Southeastern Electric Reliability Council (SERC), covering Southeast Texas and parts of other states, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), covering most of Texas but no other states. House Bill 1567 adds a Utilities Code subchapter that sets out provisions governing the transition to competition for an investor-owned electric utility that is operating solely outside of ERCOT in territory included in SERC on January 1, 2005. The bill places the utility under traditional cost-of-service regulation until it is authorized by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) to implement customer choice. Deregulatory provisions of the Utilities Code, with certain exceptions, do not apply until customer choice is implemented, and certain PUC orders relating to deregulation, if issued before the bill's effective date, are void. No one may file a proceeding to change, alter, or revoke the electric rates of a covered utility before June 30, 2007, and any resulting rate modification may not take effect before June 30, 2008. Subsequently, the utility is not subject to a rate freeze. Other provisions of the bill relate to power region certification, the filing of a transition plan, separation into two utilities subject to the respective retail jurisdictions of the PUC and Louisiana regulators, a customer choice pilot project, a competitive generation tariff, and the requirements to be met before full customer choice can be approved and implemented. The bill also sets out provisions governing franchise agreements between a utility and municipalities.