Reducing Ginning Electric Costs by Avoiding the ERCOT Summer Coincident Peak

In the competitive electric market in Texas, cotton gin electric costs consist of contracted energy costs and regulated delivery charges. The regulated delivery charges consist of many line items of which two are related to transmission delivery costs. To determine the transmission delivery costs the utility uses the customer’s average recorded load that is established during the ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) coincident peak time during the months of June, July, August and September. In order to reduce the customer’s average coincident peak total (4CP), the customer must be able to shut down their gin for a short period of time. Determining the one day in each of the four summer months that will be the peak day is not difficult, but one must pay attention to ERCOT’s load forecasts, weather predictions and the load trend. A ginner may have to shut down for one to two hours in order to avoid the 15 minute period interval that the ERCOT peak may be set. After the 4CP window has passed, the customer will then be allowed to restart their gin. The transmission delivery costs associated with the ERCOT 4CP usually run about $2.00 per 4CP kW. The 4CP that is set during 2008 will be used by the utility for all monthly billing periods in 2009. A typical 1,500 kW demand load set by a large gin in Texas may see transmission costs of $1,500 per month ($18,000 per year) if they gin through the ERCOT summer month peak. Ginners are given daily emails with the predicted ERCOT peak for the day and how it relates to historical peaks and current monthly peaks. The ginner then has plenty of time to plan for a shutdown that day.