RTC+B Market Trials: How PCI Is Supporting ERCOT Clients Through a Critical Transition

ERCOT’s Real-Time Co-Optimization with Battery Storage (RTC+B) initiative marks one of the most transformative changes to ERCOT’s market design in years. And now, the next milestone is underway: Summer Market Trials. 

Earlier this year, PCI partnered with EPAM to host a public webinar introducing the scope and impacts of RTCB (Request materials for “RTC+B Unpacked” webinar here). That session helped market participants understand what was coming and how RTC+B would affect bidding, settlements, and battery storage workflows. 

This blog post builds on that foundation by sharing where things stand today and how PCI is actively supporting our clients through market trials with software updates, expert guidance, and smart tools. 

At PCI, we’re proud to be supporting our ERCOT clients through this critical phase, not just with robust software updates, but with hands-on guidance, documentation tools, and continued collaboration that aligns with ERCOT’s evolving market rules. 

What’s changing under RTC+B? 

RTC+B enables ERCOT to simultaneously optimize energy dispatch and ancillary services in real time, while introducing a unified model for energy storage resources (ESRs). This is designed to improve grid efficiency, resource participation, and price transparency. 

Participants will see impacts across: 

• Bid formulation and AS offers 

• COP changes and telemetry alignment 

• Day-ahead and real-time market coordination 

• ESR Battery Storage Operations 

In short, this redesign touches every phase of the bid-to-bill process. 

Where we are now: RTC+B Market Trials 

As of this month, ERCOT’s Summer Market Trials are live. These trials give participants the opportunity to validate system readiness ahead of RTC+B’s formal implementation. 

At PCI, we’ve been preparing for this moment for months, working closely with our clients to ensure systems are configured, workflows are understood, and teams are confident in the changes ahead. 

We’ve already hosted direct meetings, provided client-specific documentation, and shared guidance on how our software is evolving to support RTC+B. 

We also leveraged AWS Cloud to build and deploy on-demand RTCB hosted environments, empowering our clients to seamlessly connect with ERCOT’s new RTC+B system. 

How PCI software is changing to support RTC+B 

We’ve introduced software changes across our platform to support the new RTC+B framework. These include: 

• New COP Status Codes 

• DAM AS-Only Offers 

• RTM AS Offers 

• ESR Single Model Transition and Offers 

• ESR Single Model Outage Management 

• New RTCB Reports, Prices, and Notifications 

Whether it’s updating calculation workflows or enabling Real-time AS offers, these changes are designed to keep clients fully compliant and operationally ready. 

RTC+B timeline at a glance 

Here are a few key dates market participants should keep in mind: 

• May 5, 2025 – Start of RTCB Market Trials Phase 1 

• July 7, 2025 – RTCB Market Trials Phase 2 

• September 2, 2025 – RTCB Market Trials Phase 3 

• October 31, 2025 – Tentative, End of RTCB Market Trials 

Meet your new RTC+B companion 

To help clients and market participants stay on top of the evolving RTC+B requirements, we’ve launched the RTC+B Chatbot, an AI-powered documentation assistant trained on ERCOT protocols, NPRRs, and market design materials. 

Ask questions like: 

• “What are the new RTC+B bidding requirements?” 

• “How does RTC+B change ancillary service offers in ERCOT?” 

• “What are the impacts on ESR modeling and settlement?”