AUSTIN, Texas — The agency charged with overhauling Texas’ electricity market has proposed an untested structure in hopes of retaining the free-market system some blame for the blackouts during the 2021 winter storm.
Texas legislators ordered the overhaul of the state’s deregulated energy market, which Public Utility Commission Chairman Peter Lake has called “crisis-based” because incentivizes power companies to provide low-cost electricity, at the risk of the grid’s reliability.
The proposed “performance credit mechanism” — or PCM, as it’s known in the acronym-heavy parlance of energy insiders — offers power producers a financial reward to have their plants available during times when Texans are consuming the most energy.
