Overview

Winstead’s experience includes representing the interests of the PUCT during the earliest years of the commission and, more recently, as advisory counsel to the commissioners. In addition, Winstead attorneys have represented the interests of major electric market entities before the PUCT for the last twenty-five years.

Our clients are participants in regulated and competitive wholesale and retail electric markets. Winstead attorneys regularly address issues involving:

• Traditional and unbundled cost of service proceedings
• Restructured competitive electric markets
• Zonal and wholesale market rules
• Transmission development
• Right of way
• Defaults by various market participants
• Response to enforcement actions by various regulatory agencies 
• Federal and state jurisdictional issues

Our representation of the electric and gas industry covers the entire spectrum of the market, from real estate and land use issues to litigation resolution and transactions. Winstead’s extensive experience includes playing an active advisory role in the industry’s restructuring beginning with the ERCOT wholesale market in 1995, as well as several major utility reorganizations and acquisitions beginning in the 1980's.

Additional electric industry representative matters include:

• Wind Power and Electricity Generation – Represented the largest electric power generation company in Texas, which is also the state’s largest purchaser of wind-generated electricity, in the PUCT’s consideration of wind energy industry expansion. In the PUCT’s hearings, the Winstead team assisted the client in identifying new transmission lines to increase available wind energy and persuaded the PUCT to prioritize those lines.
  
  
• ERCOT – Extensive experience representing clients in matters involving the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), as well as other independent system operators and reliability councils. 
  
  
• CREZ – Represented clients on all contested proceedings and rulemaking projects related to the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones before both PUCT and ERCOT. 
  
  
• Rulemaking Proceedings – Advised, counseled and advocated on behalf of various electric industry clients during rulemaking proceedings. Issues involved unbundling and transition to competition issues, certification requirements for construction of new transmission facilities, and standards applicable to retail electric providers. 
  
  
• Transaction Counsel – Obtained approvals of the sale, transfer or merger of regulated utilities, as well as the individual major assets of regulated utilities. 
  
  
• Certificates of Convenience and Necessity – Secured certificates for more than 30 transmission projects, including applications involving many of the largest projects undertaken in the last decade.

Project Finance
Public and Regulatory Law
Electricity Regulatory and Industry Counsel
Government Relations
Intellectual Property Protection
Real Estate, Environment, Tax and Commercial Transations, and Litigation

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