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
Ambulance Chasers See Gold in California Power Pinch
LCG, Dec. 19, 2000--The California power crisis has caused visions of solid gold sugar plums to dance in the heads of the state's trial lawyers and the first of what could be an avalanche of class action lawsuits have been filed in a Southern California court, alleging a conspiracy exists among some energy companies to plunder the state's consumers.O'Donnell & Shaeffer, a downtown Los Angeles law firm, said it has filed two lawsuits against Southern California Gas Co., San Diego Gas & Electric Co., Sempra Energy Inc. which owns SoCal Gas and SDG&E, El Paso Natural Gas Co., and other companies related to El Paso Natural Gas. The lawyers are looking for people who might agree with them that they have been conspired against.No one can allege allegations better than class-action lawyers, so here's how they say it: "This action involves a massive conspiracy to eliminate competition in the newly deregulated energy industry that has resulted in endangering California's electrical system and threatening California's economy. It is perhaps the largest gouging of energy consumers in American history."The grammar isn't too good, but you get the idea.The lawyers claim to have evidence that "In September of 1996, top executives of Southern California Gas Co., San Diego Gas & Electric and El Paso Natural Gas Corp. met at the Embassy Suites Hotel, near Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Fearing a new era of open competition and lower prices, these latter day captains of industry gathered secretly to hatch a conspiracy to dominate the unregulated aspects of the natural gas and electricity markets. "At the meeting, these three companies, who together dominate the Southern California natural gas market, illegally agreed not to compete against each other in the Southern California and Baja California natural gas delivery markets. They also conspired to prevent other pipelines from being built that would have competed against them and lowered natural gas prices in these markets. The conspirators sought to eliminate competition, take advantage of electric deregulation, drive up the price of natural gas, and profit from the increased prices."The lawyers are a little weak on economics, and seem to have convinced themselves that "Southern California's current 'energy crisis' is not simply the result of ever-increasing demand by a growing population for energy. Rather, it is the direct result of a conspiracy among the natural gas industry's most powerful Southern California players to preserve and maintain the market dominance that they enjoyed for many years as monopolies subject to regulation."You be the judge.
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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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