The Texas context
ERCOT’s Emergency Response Service procures qualified responses through QSEs, including demand reduction and certain generation arrangements. Texas SB 6 also addresses large-load emergency behaviour. These are not interchangeable permissions to energize public distribution lines. The provider, market and technical arrangements must establish the actual mode of support.
Our view
The most credible near-term community contribution may be reducing campus imports when the system needs relief. Directly supplying a water plant or shelter is a different project with a defined electrical boundary. Neither should be marketed as a general ability to power neighbouring homes.
Three different services
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| Service | What it does | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Reduce campus imports | Relieves demand on the connected system | No direct electricity delivery to a particular neighbour |
| Authorized export | Supplies energy at an approved connection | No assurance that a damaged distribution feeder can deliver it |
| Defined local resilience network | Supplies agreed critical loads inside an engineered boundary | No general right to backfeed a public grid |
The owner’s situation
A campus has backup generation and plans storage. The county asks whether those assets could help during an extended outage. The owner wants to contribute, but the generator is committed to tenant continuity, air authorization reflects a particular duty, and the public feeder may be disconnected or damaged. The decision is which service can be delivered safely and contractually, with a funding model that does not rely on exporting energy through an unavailable network.
What we need to establish
Establish the one-line diagrams, interconnection and export conditions, protection scheme, fuel duration, storage reserve and applicable air authorization. Identify actual community critical loads with emergency managers and their asset owners. Check transfer arrangements, communications, restoration procedures and who can operate each switch. Tenant reserve cannot be treated as surplus merely because it is idle on a normal day.
The options we would test
What owners should do
Our proposed execution sequence for this assignment:
Define the emergency service precisely
Name the beneficiary, meter, magnitude, duration and conditions. A general memorandum promising community resilience is not enough to procure or test the service.
Protect the reserve before selling the remainder
Have engineers and operators establish the protected campus load and contingency reserve. Model fuel delivery failure, degraded battery capacity and a long outage. Reduce the offered service when the protected case consumes the resource.
Match funding to public and private benefit
Separate campus continuity expenditure from incremental public-serving assets. Agree capital contributions, availability payments if appropriate, testing, maintenance and replacement with authorized counterparties. Public funds and process must have an independent lawful basis.
Test the complete chain
Run approved commissioning and periodic exercises, including communications failure and return to normal operation. Sitebraid coordinates the public, utility and campus interfaces; qualified operators retain switching and protection authority.
How we protect the decision
Do not assume that an emergency overrides air limits, interconnection conditions or customer rights. Any emergency authorization must be specific and applicable. Do not assume islanding capability from ownership of a generator or battery. Avoid simultaneous commitments to tenant backup, market dispatch and a critical facility unless the combined design and contracts support them.
What completion looks like
A useful outcome is one accepted service with a verified operating envelope, funded maintenance, identified dispatch authority and documented tests. If export or community-island operation cannot be authorized, a tested load-reduction arrangement may still provide meaningful value. The public claim should match the tested service exactly.
What we would track
- Available support after tenant reserve, by operating mode.
- Response and sustainment demonstrated at the agreed boundary.
- Fuel and storage sufficiency in the prolonged-outage case.
- Exercise findings closed and recurring costs funded.
Promise the service you can test, fund and deliver, not an undefined community microgrid.