ERCOT stands for the Electric Reliability Council Of Texas. ERCOT manages the flow of electric power to approximately 20 million Texas customers – representing 85 percent of the state's electric load and 75 percent of the Texas land area.
Demand Response in ERCOT
ERCOT has two Demand Response programs – Load Acting As a Resource (LaaR) and Emergency Interruptible Load Service (EILS). To learn more on EILS, click here.
LaaR
LaaR is a program that allows demand resources to bid into the wholesale ancillary services market, including balancing energy, non-spinning reserves and responsive reserves, and for which they are paid the market price for cleared bids. The program requires a 10 minute response time. As of 2007, the program is capped at 1,150 mw and is currently oversubscribed, so bids are subject to proration. Customers are paid the daily market clearing price for their cleared bid, whether they are called on to provide services or not. LaaR customers must meet substantial communication and testing requirements to become qualified to participate, and are subject to Under Frequency Relay (UFR) control of load resources.
EILS
EILS is an Emergency Interruptible Load Service that ERCOT procures to maintain grid reliability and reduce the likelihood of the need to shed firm load. ERCOT may procure up to 1000 MW of capacity for each contract period. ERCOT qualified loads which participate in the LAAR program or other RRS is not available for EILS.
Currently the Contract Periods for EILS capacity are - June through September
- October through January
- February through May.
ERCOT will request bids from QSEs prior to each EILS contract period.
Bids will be selected on a least cost bid per MW of capacity. ERCOT may consider geographic locations and affects on zonal or local congestion. An EILS bid must declare a minimum amount of MW that the EILS customer is willing to provide and what time periods (defined below) the customer will commit to.
An EILS customer is subject to a maximum of two (2) dispatch instructions per EILS Contract Period and a maximum of 8 hours of dispatch instructions per EILS contract period unless an EILS deployment is still in effect when the eighth hour lapses. The customer must reduce its load as contracted within 10 minutes of instruction from ERCOT. The customer must follow dispatch instruction until ERCOT releases EILS customers. A customer can select the hourly time periods they can participate from the following options:
- Business Hours – hour ending 0900-2000 M-F, excluding holidays
- Non-Business Hours – All other hours
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