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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.

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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

Industry News

Texas Electric Dereg Sneaks in Quietly

LCG, Aug. 1, 2001Electric deregulation came quietly to Texas yesterday as a thrice-delayed pilot program of customer choice slowly got underway. Only 90,000 residential retail customers had signed up for the program, which was open to 5 percent, or about 295,000, customers.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which has become the state's independent system operator, was doing the switching of customers to alternative electricity providers under a pilot program aimed at giving the state's utilities some experience with deregulation before it descends full bloom on the state next January 1.

"We're starting slowly, so we have had 75 switch-overs today and 75 tomorrow, and then we'll be ramping up as we test the systems," ERCOT spokeswoman Jennifer Taylor said. The full conversion should be finished by the end of August.

The program was originally schedule to begin June 1, but computer problems caused the date to be set back three times. ERCOT, which operates 10 separate control areas in Texas, had to convert its systems to manage the state's grid from a central point in Austin, and there were bugs.

Those delays had some people worried that California-like problems could plague the Texas adventure, but supporters pointed to a couple of big differences. For one thing, there will be no shortage of power supply in Texas, which has been permissive in allowing the construction of new power plants, while California actively continues to discourage new facilities on environmental grounds.

In addition, the Texas wholesale power market has been operating smoothly for more than five years. A major problem in California was a requirement that all electricity be bought and sold through a state power exchange which operated as a spot market. Utilities were barred from entering into long-term contracts for power to serve their native loads.

Despite the slow beginning, the beginning yesterday of deregulation in Texas was seen as an event of consequence.

"This is a historic moment for electric customers in Texas. Texans can now choose their electriccompany the same way they choose other goods and services in their everyday lives," said TexasPublic Utilities Commission Chairman Max Yzaguirre.

They will be choosing from retail providers including California Gov. Gray Davis' "biggest snakes on the planet earth" plus some companies that avoided the Golden State's market, such as Entergy Corp., Texas-New Mexico Power Co., TXU Corp., Royal Dutch/Shell's Shell Energy and The New Power Co., a joint venture of Enron Corp., AOL/Time Warner Inc. and IBM.

There are also 10 registered aggregators who hope to put together groups of small customers that are sufficient large in sum to negotiate lower rates from power producers.

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