Electric Reliability Council of Texas

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) is an American organization that operates Texas's electrical grid, the Texas Interconnection, which supplies power to more than 25 million Texas customers and represents 90 percent of the state's electric load. ERCOT is the first independent system operator (ISO) in the United States. ERCOT works with the Texas Reliability Entity (TRE), one of six regional entities within the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) that coordinate to improve reliability of the bulk power grid. As the ISO for the region, ERCOT dispatches power on an electric grid that connects more than 46,500 miles of transmission lines and more than 610 generation units. The United States Energy Information Administration Electric Power Monthly published the following detailed report regarding Texas's Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors), 2010-December 2020, (Thousand Megawatthours), Table 1.1, for the Month of December 2020: Coal: 78,700 MWh; Petroleum Liquids: 909 MWh; Petroleum Coke: 742 MWh; Natural Gas: 125,704 MWh; Other Gas: 972 MWh; Nuclear: 69,871 MWh; Hydroelectric Conventional: 23,086 MWh; Solar: 5,381 MWh; Renewable Sources Excluding Hydroelectric and Solar: 38,812 MWh; Hydroelectric Pumped Storage: -368; Other: 1,160 MWh. According to an ERCOT report, the major sources of generating capacity in Texas are natural gas (51%), wind (24.8%), coal (13.4%), nuclear (4.9%), solar (3.8%), and hydroelectric or biomass-fired units (1.9%). ERCOT also performs financial settlements for the competitive wholesale bulk-power market and administers retail switching for 7 million premises in competitive choice areas. ERCOT is a membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, and its members include consumers, electric cooperatives, generators, power marketers, retail electric providers, investor-owned electric utilities (transmission and distribution providers), and municipally owned electric utilities.