Dive Summary:
- On Tuesday, Luminant announced it would temporarily suspend operations at three of its Texas coal-fired generating units for the winter.
- Luminant was already planning to shut down two units at its Monticello plant, but has now added its 750-megawatt (MW) Martin Lake 3 coal unit to the list. Luminant plans to restart operations at Martin Lake 3 next June.
- Luminant cited low wholesale power prices as the reason for the move. "We want to operate as much of our generation as we can, but it does not make economic sense to operate a unit at a financial loss," Luminant spokeswoman Meranda Cohn said.
From the article:
Texas regulators are working to raise wholesale power prices in the $29 billion electric market.
Overall, electric use in Texas is growing faster than generation is being built, shrinking the state's reserve margin and increasing the prospects for rolling outages in future years. [...]
If approved by ERCOT, Luminant's request will bring the total number of megawatts "mothballed" for the winter to 2,600. Anther 2,000 MW in ERCOT is mothballed year round, according to ERCOT data.