Emergency rules set by the Texas Public Utility Commission that increased the wholesale price of electricity price to $9,000 per megawatt-hour during Winter Storm Uri were “invalid” and must be reexamined, a state appeals court ruled Friday.
The long-anticipated opinion from the Third District Court of Appeals in Austin said PUC board members issued two unlawful rules — an “operation of executive fiat” — that allowed the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to increase the emergency price of electricity 650 percent for five days.
The decision, according to legal analysts, could be a multibillion-dollar victory for companies such as Luminant Energy, Pattern Energy, Exelon Generation, Constellation NewEnergy and Brazos Electric Coop, all of whom had to buy electricity on the wholesale market during the storm and claim they were charged too much. If the decision is upheld, the PUC may have to order electricity generation companies Calpine Corp., Talen Energy, TexGen Power and others that sold power at the $9,000 wholesale rate to issue refunds that could add up to billions of dollars.