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News
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LCG, August 14, 2024 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2025, highlighting the region's rapid transition toward increased reliance on renewable energy resources and battery storage.
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LCG, August 14, 2024 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2025, highlighting the region's rapid transition toward increased reliance on renewable energy resources and battery storage.
Read more
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Industry News
Davis Calls for State Action in California Power Crisis
LCG, Jan. 9, 2001California's deregulation of its electric industry has been a "colossal and dangerous failure," Gov. Gray Davis told a joint session of the state legislature yesterday evening in his third "state of the state" message.While Californians ordinarily pay scant attention to the annual talk, this year's message had the ear of Wall Street, the national media, regulators and lawmakers of the other states and even the White House, where Davis will meet this evening with President Clinton and other administration officials.Davis said last night that he will take whatever steps are necessary to keep power flowing in California, and most of his ideas smacked of additional government intervention in the market."There is no easy solution. But if I have to use the power of eminent domain to prevent generators from driving consumers into the dark and utilities into bankruptcy, then that's what I will do," he said.That hint at using his powers to take over power plants owned by companies he has characterized at "pirates" failed to send shivers down the spines of independent power producers because it can't be done. Some of his other suggestions were equally unlikely.Davis placed the blame for the California power crisis on "out-of-state" electricity suppliers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The power suppliers are companies such as Duke Energy Corp., Dynegy Inc. and Reliant energy Inc., the firms that purchased the power plants the state required its utilities to sell.Those firms proceeded to sell power into the California wholesale market at prices set by that market, not by the power producers. The prices turned out to be unconscionably high when it turned out Californian's wanted more electricity than was available. And "FERC has shirked its responsibility to protect ratepayers from this legalized highway robbery," Davis said.Davis proposed repealing the law that would allow the state's utilities to sell their remaining generating facilities mostly hydroelectric and nuclear plants and instead forcing the companies to sell the power they generate only to California consumers.The governor, unfortunately, ignored interstate commerce laws that forbid a state from preventing companies from selling their products to markets in other states. Also ignored was the fact that the California transmission system is interconnected with those of 10 other states, Canada and Mexico.Davis did not deal with the impending insolvency of the state's two largest electric utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison Co. except to say it was an "irresponsible notion" to consider bankruptcy of the firms as an option.The state of the state is customarily used by governors to lay out legislative proposals to support their programs, and Davis had some proposals he believes would help the state's power problems:- Add consumer advocates to the governing board of the California Independent System Operator.
- Make it possible for utilities to enter into long-term contracts for power to serve their native loads. This plan would be supplemented by pressuring independent power producers to supply the power at "just and reasonable" prices.
- Add 50 new inspectors to the California Public Utilities Commission staff to make sure independently-owned power plants are not withholding power from the system.
- Make it a criminal act to withhold power if that action threatens public health or safety.
- Correct the bidding process by which wholesale power is bought and sold. The governor described the existing process as "crazy."
- Give state regulators authority to order any plant not shut down for scheduled maintenance to produce power.
- Give the state attorney general an additional $4 million to investigate and prosecute violations by the owners of merchant power plants.
- Require municipal utilities to sell surplus power into the wholesale market at "reasonable" rates.
- Provide low-interest financing for development of smaller peaking plants.
The governor also suggested using state-owned land for the development of power plants, so long as the output of the plants is reserved for the California market.He also called for a new bureaucracy a California Public Power Authority the build new power plants.
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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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