The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is one of 10 regional reliability councils of the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC). ERCOT is also the independent system operator responsible for grid and market operations in the ERCOT region. In July 2001, ERCOT opened its retail and wholesale markets to competition. After three plus years of single control area operations, ERCOT continues to maintain a strong track-record of reliability and market operations success under the competitive framework. Just as other electricity markets evolve through changes to their initial designs, ERCOT is in the process of investigating market changes that can improve both real time grid operations and wholesale market activities to reduce costs to end use customers and further ensure the reliability of the ERCOT grid. This document examines the need for change by introducing some of the challenges of the current real time grid operations and comparing them to the changes being vetted in the ERCOT stakeholder process. This comparison of the proposed changes focus on the system operation impacts, commercial operations impacts and the market mitigation impacts.
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