A bankruptcy judge agreed to take up a challenge by Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc. seeking to reduce the nearly $1.9 billion it was billed by Texas’ power-grid operator during a freak winter storm in February, sweeping aside opposition by state power regulators, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones in Houston said that he would consider the dispute, which pits the largest power cooperative in the state against the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The judge said at a hearing yesterday that bankruptcy court, not the state-court system, was the appropriate venue to decide how much Brazos owes. Lawyers representing Ercot’s regulator, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, had urged the judge not to hear the lawsuit. Brazos filed for bankruptcy in March after receiving billions of dollars in bills from ERCOT for a week in February when winter storm Uri knocked power plants offline and left millions of customers without electricity for days. The bills were that high because ERCOT’s electricity rates had risen to the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour during the storm, compared with an average of roughly $22 per megawatt hour last year.
