Enrolled Bill Summary

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Senate Bill 6 amends the Public Utility Regulatory Act, Utilities Code, and Water Code to set out provisions regarding the planning for, interconnection and operation of, and costs related to providing service for certain electrical loads and the generation of electric power by a water supply or sewer service corporation. The bill requires the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) by rule to establish standards for interconnecting large load customers in the ERCOT power region in a manner designed to support business development in Texas while minimizing the potential for stranded infrastructure costs and maintaining system reliability.

Senate Bill 6 sets out provisions providing for the co-location of large load customers with existing and generation resources. Among other provisions, the bill does the following:

• requires a power generation company, municipally owned utility, or electric cooperative to submit a notice to ERCOT before implementing certain net metering arrangements;
• authorizes the applicable entity that provides electric service at the location of the new net metering arrangement to object to the arrangement under certain conditions;
• requires ERCOT to study the system impacts of a proposed net metering arrangement and removal of generation for which ERCOT receives a notice;
• requires the PUC to approve, deny, or impose reasonable conditions on the proposed net metering arrangement as necessary to maintain system reliability; and
• requires those conditions to require an applicable generation resource to make a certain amount of dispatchable capacity available to the ERCOT power region after the arrangement's implementation at ERCOT's direction in advance of an anticipated emergency condition.

Senate Bill 6 requires the PUC to require ERCOT to do the following with respect to large load demand management, among other provisions:

• ensure that each electric cooperative, transmission and distribution utility, and municipally owned utility serving a transmission-voltage customer develops a protocol to allow the load to be curtailed during firm load shed; and
• develop a reliability service to competitively procure demand reductions from large load customers with a demand of at least 75 megawatts to be deployed in the event of an anticipated emergency condition.

Senate Bill 6 authorizes a nonprofit water supply or sewer service corporation operating under applicable state law to generate electric power for use in the corporation's operations, limited to powering certain equipment and infrastructure for specified purposes. The bill includes provisions authorizing a corporation operating solely as a wholesale water supplier or sewer service in a county with a population of less than 350,000 to generate excess electric power.

Senate Bill 6 requires the PUC to evaluate, among other matters, whether the existing methodology used to charge wholesale transmission costs to distribution providers under applicable state law continues to appropriately assign costs for transmission investment.