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News
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LCG, September 30, 2025--Vistra Corp. announced yesterday that it will proceed with the next phase of its capital plan to support grid reliability in Texas. In 2024, Vistra identified over $1 billion worth of potential capital additions in generation capacity within the Texas ERCOT market by 2028 if market conditions were supportive. Now, with West Texas' growing power requirements, particularly the state's expanding oil and natural gas industries, Vistra reached a final investment decision and confirms it will build two new advanced natural gas-fired power units on-site at its Permian Basin Power Plant.
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LCG, September 24, 2025--Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. (ERCOT) yesterday announced its new initiative to increase its efforts to fully use and apply innovation and transformation through industry collaboration to best overcome the challenges and opportunities facing future grid operations. The new Grid Research, Innovation, and Transformation (GRIT) initiative will advance research and prototyping of emerging concepts and solutions to better understand the implications of rapid grid and technology evolution and position ERCOT to lead in the future energy landscape.
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Industry News
El Paso Natural Gas Sums it Up for California
LCG, Feb. 27, 2001Stung by what it considers "misinformation," El Paso Corp. yesterday protested that it was not part of California's energy problem and, in fact, has tried to be a part of the solution.In response to charges that it has manipulated natural gas prices by withholding capacity on its El Paso Natural Gas pipeline, the company contends that high gas prices have been caused more by high demand for electricity and bad forward planning.The company notes that it is just about impossible to withhold capacity on the pipeline system because the pipeline is required by law to post publicly any unused capacity and must sell that capacity for no more than existing published rates.El Paso said there were "significant quantities" of unused capacity on the pipeline last year, which could have been used to build reserves for future use. "If California had taken advantage of the opportunity in 2000 to store the same volumes of natural gas that had been stored in 1999, reliance on the spot market would have been reduced and the steep rise in prices at the California border could havebeen substantially mitigated or avoided," the company said. Having got that off its chest, El Paso proceeded to outline how those beyond California's borders view the state's power crisis.- First, the construction of new power plants in California is a slow, difficult, and heavily regulated process. As a result, the growing demand has far outstripped in-state generating capabilities.
- Second, abnormally low rainfall and increased out-of-state demand caused some of the hydroelectric power normally relied on by California to become unavailable.
- Third, increased demand for power in the western United States drove up prices that California had to pay to out-of-state generators.
- Fourth, state policies deregulated wholesale power prices but capped the rates paid by consumers, leaving demand unrestrained and preventing utilities from recovering their costs.
- Fifth, because rate caps prevented utilities from passing increased costs to consumers, the utilities' creditworthiness was impaired, causing supplemental power needed during peak periods to become more difficult and expensive to purchase.
- Sixth, the early and greater-than-normal use of peaking units-plants that are designed to only operate under peak demand conditions-necessitated unscheduled maintenance, rendering them unavailable at critical times.
- Seventh, during the final months of 2000, some power plants were forced to shut down because increased usage exhausted their air emissions credits.
- Eighth, a warm summer followed by an early onset of cold weather further drove up demand forpower.
- Finally, the increased power costs in California could have been substantially mitigated through long-term power contracts and less reliance on the volatile short-term power market.
Not everybody will agree with what El Paso has to say but everybody ought to pay attention.
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UPLAN-NPM
The Locational Marginal Price Model (LMP) Network Power Model
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UPLAN-ACE
Day Ahead and Real Time Market Simulation
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UPLAN-G
The Gas Procurement and Competitive Analysis System
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PLATO
Database of Plants, Loads, Assets, Transmission...
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