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LCG Publishes 2024 Annual Outlook for Texas Electricity Market (ERCOT)

LCG, October 10, 2023 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2024, based on the most likely weather, market, transmission, and generator conditions.

Read more

LCG Publishes 2024 Annual Outlook for Texas Electricity Market (ERCOT)

LCG, October 10, 2023 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2024, based on the most likely weather, market, transmission, and generator conditions.

Read more

Industry News

California's Davis to Address State Tonight

By Ric Teague
Editor
LCG, Jan. 8, 2001California governors of recent memory have borrowed a page from the White House by going on television with an annual "State of the State" message, and tonight Gov. Gray Davis will lay out for all to see the current condition of the Golden State and what he plans to do to solve its problems.

He may even mention the mess that the state's electric industry is in. Or he may not.

Typically, a California governor making his third State of the State address tells a special joint session of the legislature how much better off the state is than it was four years ago, lists the achievements of his administration that have brought the state to its current pinnacle and ticks off a laundry list of legislative goals that will reduce crime, make the roads smoother and safer, improve test scores in schools and improve the air.

The governor's speech will be broadcast so citizens not otherwise occupied may listen in and will be reported on in Tuesday's newspapers.

Ordinarily, Californians don't pay much attention. Tonight, they may. Californians are gradually becoming aware that there is something wrong at the powerhouse. Newspapers have for the past week or so been talking about possible electric rate increases and 10 days ago the California Public utilities Commission granted the state's two largest electric utilities a one cent per kilowatt-hour rate hike.

If the governor addresses the electricity problem, what can he say?

To most Californians there is no problem. They are paying 10 percent less for electricity now than they were in 1997. They have heard vaguely that there is some sort of electricity shortage, but Los Angeles and San Francisco were both lit up like a Christmas tree throughout the holiday season. Only in the San Diego area has anyone seen his electric bill go up.

The governor will have to convince the legislature and the people that there is a problem, and he will try to convince them that it is not of his own making. The second part should be easy, unless he blames his Republican predecessor. Most Californians are smart enough to realize that all legislation is passed at will by a legislature in which Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans.

The electricity problem in his state may be an issue that Davis can't duck. He can take the bull by the horns and tell the legislature and the people that electric rates could double over the short term, until sufficient new generation is added in the state to make it independent of imported power, and until workable market mechanisms have been instituted and allowed to mature.

Or he can continue to blame price-gouging independent power producers and an indifferent federal bureaucracy for the state's power problems.

Tonight's speech could make or break the governor.

Tune in tomorrow.

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