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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
California's Widening Conflict-of-interest Morass -. Every State Official Seems to Own Energy Stock
By Ric Teague
EditorLCG, Aug. 2, 2001There seems to be no end to the revelations about California state energy officials who own stock in companies they either regulate of buy power from, and now you can add a lawmaker who has a lot to say about how those companies fare in the bright new world of deregulation.Yesterday, state Sen. John Burton confirmed he held stock in energy companies, including El Paso Energy Corp. and The Williams Cos. Burton, a San Francisco Democrat, helped put the state in the energy-buying business, and both companies have made out like the bandits Gov. Gray Davis says they are.Burton is the first member of the legislature tarred with the brush of potential conflict of interest, and in another revelation yesterday, the chairman of the California Energy Commission became the first regulator.According to media reports, William Keese repeatedly traded shares of energy companies, including some with business before his commission -- the state agency responsible for licensing large power plants and approving other energy-related projects.And, while neither a lawmaker nor a regulator, a member of the state's Electricity Oversight Board, a new layer of bureaucracy created by California's electric deregulation fiasco, has reported owning more than $1 million in stock in Enron Corp., one of Davis' "biggest snakes on the planet earth."Bruce G. Willison, dean of UCLA's Anderson School of business and a member of the five-person Oversight Board, told the Los Angeles Times that he owned $1 million worth of Enron at the end of last year and was unsure how much he now had. "There has not been anything that has even come close to a conflict," he told the paper. "We aren't a regulator. . . . We have not had issues before us that address any one company."But Burton, forgetting for a moment his own shareholdings, said "If he owns that kind of stock, he should not be on that board. You're talking about serious money and serious profit. People that are on an energy board shouldn't have that--that's the bottom line."None of these is expected to lose his job in a wave of ethical reawakening that is sweeping Sacramento in the wake of disclosures about potential conflicts of interest, but several already have left the state capital while others are resisting.- Peggy Cheng, an energy buyer for the California Department of Water Resources, fired last Friday.
- Mark Fabiani, a public relations expert for Davis and a former spin doctor for the Clinton administration. He left his position without being paid.
- Richard Ferreira, another water agency power purchaser fired on Friday.
- Elaine Griffin, a power purchaser for the water agency who quit after filing a financial disclosure statement.
- Chris Lehane, Fabiani's partner in Davis' publicity efforts, who also left without pay.
- Herman Leung, an electricity buyer for the Department of Water Resources among those Fired Friday.
- Constantine Louie, also a water agency power purchaser, also sacked on Friday.
- Steve Maviglio, Davis' "spokesman," who is doing his best to keep his job.
- William F. Mead, an energy buyer for the water agency, another who lost his job Friday.
"Something's fallen through the cracks here," said Robert M. Stern, on learning of Burton's holdings. Stern is president of the Center for Governmental Studies and father of California's 1974 Political Reform Act."Something's wrong when the top people in the governor's office don't file these things, and weren't even told to," he added. The Fair Political Practices Commission "isn't monitoring these agencies the way it should."Jim Knox, executive director of California Common Cause, said "A whole slew of agencies are not doing their job in ensuring that the people they hire file statements of economic interest." On the subject of Keese's holdings, he said "A conflict of this magnitude from someone in such a critical capacity on an issue that's affecting billions of dollars in public funds is astounding. This obviously cannot be allowed to continue unaddressed. This is something we'd be interested in pursuing."Michael Aguirre, a lawyer whose clients have sued power suppliers for alleged price gouging and who is no friend of the power producers, said "Having people buying electricity and owning stock in the companies they're buying from -- it doesn't get much worse than that."No it doesn't, said the Sacramento Bee in an editorial yesterday. The Bee pointed out that "The (state's) electricity buyers apparently couldn't be trusted to understand they shouldn't own stock in companies they were buying from, and the administration apparently couldn't be trusted to tell them otherwise."" Worst of all," the paper said, "the governor apparently couldn't be trusted to set the right tone, telling those who worked for him that the state's extraordinary venture into the electricity market required extra ethical diligence, so that the public could never doubt that public servants were working for the public's interest, not their own."
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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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