Dive Brief:

• Electric use in Texas is growing more slowly than previously thought, partly because of increased customer conservation, and the state has adequate reserve margins until 2017, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said in a Friday report.
• ERCOT expects the state to have a 16% reserve margin this summer, above a 13.75% target, according to the report, which was based on a new load forecasting methodology.
• It appears less likely that the Texas Public Utility Commission will overhaul the state's power market as some generators have wanted.

Dive Insight:

Generators have been pressing for some form of a capacity market in Texas, which they say is needed to spur power plant construction. For now, it appears that regulators will leave the state's market unchanged. Even so, Calpine said Friday that it bought a 1,050 MW power plant, which it may expand.

“Although population and the economy continue to grow in the ERCOT region, the relationship between economic growth and peak electric demand has changed in the past several years,” Warren Lasher, ERCOT system planning director, said. “We believe recent improvements to our load forecasting methodology are providing a more realistic view of the future electric demand we need to be prepared to serve.”