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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

SoCal Ed Says 'No' to Davis' New Twist on Rescue

LCG, Aug. 24, 2001--Southern California Edison Co. and its parent holding company, Edison International Inc., took a look at the "rescue" plan conjured up by California Gov. Gray Davis and presented to Democrat lawmakers and failed to recognize the deal the companies and the governor put together last April.

No dice, said the utility and its owners.

Gone was the plan for the state to buy SoCal Ed's transmission system for $2.76 billion, which would have given the company an infusion of cash to pay off creditors that are storming its walls. In its place was a scheme that would give the state a five-year option to buy the wires at their book value, or $1.2 billion -- less than half the price agreed to by California's agreeable governor.

"We find deeply objectionable the five-year option on the sale of the transmission system for book value," said Brian Bennett, vice president for external affairs. "There are many provisions which are workable in the bill as drafted," he said, "but that provision clearly makes this an unworkable piece of legislation."

"Five years puts a cloud on a very significant portion of our businesses and add to that, puts a cloud at a price that is a fire sale price for a very valuable asset of the company," Bennett said.

But the utility would still have a way to raise the money it needs to pay off most of the $3.5 billion in debt it ran up subsidizing the electric bills of its customers. Davis' latest idea would allow the company to issue $2.9 billion in tax-exempt revenue bonds, for which it -- not the state -- would be the guarantor.

There's no assurance that the state legislature will pass the legislation Davis has proffered, thought the state Senate passed something very much like it in July. Bennett said the utility would continue to work with the lawmaker, just in case they come up with something palatable.

"We are prepared to accept something that makes us creditworthy and that offers a fair and reasonable solution and price for any assets of the company that are required to be sold as a condition of this agreement," he said.

The legislature, which returned to work on Monday of this week after its summer recess, will be gone again in three weeks, when it adjourns for the year on September 14, and Bennett said it's difficult to speculate about what will happen if the lawmakers don't produce an agreement it can stomach.

"It is clear to everyone that this company has done its darnedest to stay out of bankruptcy and have done so successfully for nine months with the forbearance of our creditors," he said, adding "If we don't get an agreement, the reaction of creditors is something that we cannot control. What action our creditors take will obviously weigh heavily on the future of this company, whether it goes into bankruptcy or doesn't."

It only takes three creditors -- and SoCal Ed has hundreds, some of which are very unhappy -- to push the utility into involuntary bankruptcy.

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