EnergyOnline
Services

RSS FEED

EnergyOnline.com rss

News

OG&E and Google Announce Contract for Three Data Centers in Oklahoma

LCG, April 30, 2026--OG&E, the operating subsidiary of OGE Energy Corp., announced today that it will power three new data centers that Google announced in Muskogee and Stillwater, Oklahoma last year. As part of the agreement, Google will also make power generation capacity available from two solar facilities in Stephens and Muskogee Counties that are currently under construction. The data centers and associated Electric Service Agreements are expected to provide economic growth for local communities and the state, contribute to grid stability, and benefit OG&E's current customers.

Read more

Graphic Packaging and NextEra Energy Resources Sign 250-MW Virtual Power Purchase Agreement

LCG, April 29, 2026--Graphic Packaging Holding Company today announced a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with NextEra Energy Resources, LLC. With the VPPA agreement, NextEra Energy Resources plans to build the Selenite Springs Energy Center, a 250-MW solar energy facility in West Texas, and Graphic Packaging will be the sole buyer of the facility's renewable energy attribute certificates. Graphic Packaging, a global provider of sustainable consumer packaging, expects the agreement to cover approximately 43 percent of its 2025 electricity usage in the U.S. and Canada. The agreement will advance Graphic Packaging's commitment to source renewable electricity and reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Read more

Industry News

EPA Proposes Rules to Push Cogeneration

LCG, Oct. 16, 2001--The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday proposed an amendment to the Clean Air Act that would encourage manufacturing and industrial concerns to provide their own electric power and, at the same time, produce thermal energy they now either purchase or produce in separate facilities.

The proposed new rules would make it easier to get permits for cogeneration plants, which produce electricity and use the heat from that process to make steam for their manufacturing operations and use thermal energy to heat and cool their buildings.

The idea is not new. Many of the "qualifying facility" power plants spawned by the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) are cogeneration plants. Some companies, which require large amounts of process steam, such as those in the chemicals industry, have built cogeneration plants for that purpose and sell surplus electricity in regional wholesale power markets.

Cogeneration developers, such as Trigen Corp., have built cogen plants that provide heating and cooling to sections of cities and sell all their electric power into wholesale markets.

Conventional thermal power plants -- coal-, natural gas- and oil-fueled facilities as well as nuclear power plants, vent their waste heat to the atmosphere. Cogeneration plants, by making use of this heat, typically achieve higher energy efficiency rates that the older plants.

An older coal-fired power plant might produce power having only 30 to 50 percent of the energy present in the coal that was burned. Modern gas-fired plants, operating in combined-cycle where exhaust heat from combustion turbines is used to spin conventional turbines, improve on that and yield energy efficiency of perhaps 70 percent.

But still, 30 percent of the energy present in the plant's fuel is wasted. In a cogeneration plant, as much as 80 percent of the fuel's energy is put to use. A national energy policy report released earlier this year by the Bush administration pointed to cogeneration as a way to increase U.S. energy efficiency.

The proposed EPA rules would ease requirements for cogen plants under the agency's "new source review," which sets emissions limits for new power plants. Several industrial giants, such as Bethlehem Steel, Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobil have endorse the new rules.

Copyright © 2026 LCG Consulting. All rights reserved. Terms and Copyright
UPLAN-NPM
The Locational Marginal Price Model (LMP) Network Power Model
Uniform Storage Model
A Battery Simulation Model
UPLAN-ACE
Day Ahead and Real Time Market Simulation
UPLAN-G
The Gas Procurement and Competitive Analysis System
PLATO
Database of Plants, Loads, Assets, Transmission...
CAISO CRR Auctions
Monthly Price and Congestion Forecasting Service