Deregulated means the power monopolies were broken up, before you only had one choice at your location for power company and they could charge you whatever they wanted. Texas voters rebelled and forced the state to pass a law allowing competition in power providers. The state broke up the system into four parts. ERCOT the energy reliability Council of Texas is the agency that licences and regulates the power grid and is responsible for setting the fixed tariffs and profit margins of the only monopoly left the first tier under Oncor who builds and maintains the power distribution network from the power producer’s to the consumer. ONCOR is allowed to charge a fixed rate for any flow of electrons to and from their system. The second tier is power producer’s such as the largest T
XU they own power plants and produce for WHOLE SALE every that is up for bid on the ERCOT real-time power exchange. The third tier is licenced retail power providers which the customer sees as the “power company” they produce no actual energy they must purchase it in real time 15min blocks from Ercots exchange via bidding as well. Once power has been negotiated it is dispatched via ONCOR
Grid system to the customer. One every power bill there is always two charges what the customer payed to their retail provider and what was paid to ONCOR to deliver it they wholesale costs are dealt with by your licenced retail provider. Currently ONCOR gets 3.4c per kWh and the avg retail power rate is 7 cents for a total cost of 10.4c
No one is subsidizing solar in Texas the grid maintenance expanses are paid via ONCORs allowed charges for being the distribution provider and their costs fees and profits are regulated by ERCOT which is subject to public review abd votes. The power producer’s now have to complete to sell their power on the open market in real time that includes any solar power producer’s. Who via smart meters and smart inverters know in real time what their distributed energy source is putting into the available power pool on ONCOR grid. They sell at what the current market conditions will bear at that 15min interval nothing more nothing less. The only concession solar and wind get is if there is an oversupply in the market at any given epoch they are the last to be forced to curtail generation. This means if supply by power producer’s exceeds demand then coal and gas must curtail generation first before wind then solar then nuclear curtailment on that order. My solar company competes with everyone else in real time when my panels are producing more than I am using. I don’t bank power from them I have a contract from their retail power group that I get 3c per kWh of every unit I use regardless of if it’s from my panels or not. They installed such a large system they knew 99% of the time it would be sending power out to the power bid pool and they could sell it at market prices not at 3 cents to me. The 3 cents to me is my incentive to lease them my property rights it’s a fair exchange I get a power bill that’s one third what it was , never have to conserve power again and they do all the maintenance, cleaning twice a year of the panels and if the grid goes down they put in stand alone mode inverters as a bonus for me and all that power off grid is still only 3 cents per kwhr. It’s win win for both in this contact I couldn’t be more pleased
“Deregulated means the power monopolies were broken up”
Wow! Thanks for the informative reply. A complicated situation but it makes sense.
” The only concession solar and wind get is if there is an oversupply in the market at any given epoch they are the last to be forced to curtail generation.”
That must mean you solar producers never have to curtail.
Sounds like you have a good deal assuming you can produce power for less than 3 cents per kwh. Guess you can if they pay for the maintenance of your equipment.