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NRC Renews Operating Licenses for Constellation's Nuclear Reactors at Clinton and Dresden Facilities

LCG, December 16, 2025--The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced today that it has renewed the operating licenses of Constellation LLC’s Clinton Unit 1 in Clinton, Illinois, and Dresden Units 2 and 3, near Morris, Illinois, for an additional 20 years beyond the current expiration dates. The combined capacity of these three, Illinois-based nuclear units is 2,925 MW, and the operating license extension will enable the units to generate carbon-free power through about 2050.

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ERCOT Announces Organizational Changes to Promote Grid Reliability, Rapid Demand Growth, and Innovation

LCG, December 12, 2025--Today, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) announced strategic organizational changes designed to accelerate innovation, strengthen grid reliability, and support the unprecedented growth in the demand for electricity across Texas. To meet these objectives, ERCOT created two new organizations: Interconnection and Grid Analysis, and Enterprise Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The two organizations will formally launch in January 2026.

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Industry News

FERC Forced to Release Report on Williams and AES Communications

LCG, Nov. 15, 2002--Conversations transcribed in a Federal Energy Regualtory Commission report detail what appears to have been an agreement to keep a Southern California power plant from providing power, which allowed Williams to sell power at a higher-than-expected price to the California Independent System Operator.

Williams had hoped to avoid the release of the FERC report, which FERC had earlier warned it would release unless the company agreed to erase $8 million in charges to the CAISO, which contested them as unwarranted. Although Williams agreed not to pursue the charges, a public-records lawsuit brought by The Wall Street Journal against the FERC compelled the report's release. Representatives for Williams and AES responded to the report by characterizing their communications in May 2000 as well-known and not deserving of attention. Williams settled a lawsuit brought by California this week, rewriting long-term contracts with the state to avoid further legal action.

The conversations between the companies concerned the AES Alamitos plant, from which Williams was buying and marketing power. Any power that could not be delivered as planned would and did bring a price of $750 per megawatt-hour, rather than the price of $63 in the schedule. In this case, units within the same plant provided power because the units specified in the schedule were on outage for maintenance. The additional cost to the CAISO over a fifteen-day period was estimated at $10 million.

Rhonda Morgan of Williams was quoted as saying to an AES employee at the plant, "it wouldn't hurt Williams' feelings if the outage ran long." The president of Williams Energy Marketing & Trading, Bill Hobbs, said that the release of the information against the wishes of FERC "doesn't add anything to the dialogue...", and said that AES received no compensation based on the communications.
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