News
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
RTOs Key to 'Seamless' National Grid, FERC Says
LCG, June 20, 2001Regional transmission organizations, perhaps as few as five and much larger than many of the currently operating or contemplated independent system operators, are needed to provide a "seamless" national electric transmission grid, federal regulators said yesterday."If we had them today, we would not have to spend a whole week dealing with a crisis in the West," said FERC Chairman Curtis Hebert, referring to the agency's imposition of "soft caps" on Western wholesale power prices on Monday. FERC made its intervention in the California power crisis contingent on that state's willingness to have its ISO file a plan for an RTO.FERC commissioners see a nationwide system of interconnected RTOs, all operating under uniform rules, as necessary to provide smooth movement of power from region to region as well as enhance liquidity and reduce volatility in wholesale power markets.William Massey, a Clinton appointee to FERC, said "Traders in one RTO ought to be able to move power to another RTO seamlessly," and Hebert added "We must understand that we will sink or swim together, and I think RTOs will help us swim."At yesterday's meeting, FERC commissioners grappled with ways to bring the quilt-work national grid together and standardize regulations to allow cross-border trading of power. An overriding question was how large should an RTO be.The PJM Interconnection, which began life as the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland power pool and now operates the largest wholesale electric market in the world, is seen as a model for RTOs, and could eventually expand to include the New York and new England ISOs.PJM's Phillip Harris said RTOs are necessary before other reliability issues can be addressed. "You have to get RTOs approved. Then you can have 10 entities that are accountable to FERC," he said, apparently referring to the 10 regional reliability councils of the North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry organization set up in the wake of massive blackouts in the Northeast three decades ago.Such super-RTOs would require consolidation of many smaller, and at times competing, organizations. In the West, in addition to the California Independent System Operator, there are RTO West in the Pacific Northwest, Desert Star in the Southwest and others. In the Midwest, there is the Midwest ISO as well as the competing Alliance RTO.Frank Afranji, speaking for RTO West, doubted that such super-RTOs were needed. "We really don't believe there is a need for a West-wide RTO at this time," he said."We would compel you to move forward with an RTO," Hebert reminded him.
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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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