EnergyOnline
Services

RSS FEED

EnergyOnline.com rss

News

Hydrostor Announces Offtake Agreement with California Community Power for the Willow Rock Energy Storage Center

LCG, February 12, 2026--Hydrostor today announced that the Willow Rock Energy Storage Center has signed a 50 MW offtake agreement with California Community Power (CC Power) on behalf of six of its community choice aggregator members: CleanPowerSF, Peninsula Clean Energy, Redwood Coast Energy Authority, San Jose Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy Authority and Valley Clean Energy Authority.

Read more

VoltaGrid and INNIO Collaborate on 1.5 GW Deal for Behind-the-Meter Data Center Power Generation

LCG, February 4, 2026--Natura Resources LLC (Natura), a developer of advanced molten-salt nuclear reactors, announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement with NGL Water Solutions Permian LLC, a subsidiary of NGL Energy Partners LP (NGL), to pursue opportunities to combine Natura's advanced nuclear reactor technology with thermal desalination for power production and oil and gas produced water treatment. NGL transports, treats, recycles and disposes of more than 3 million barrels per day of produced and flowback water generated from crude oil and natural gas production in the Permian Basin.

Read more

Industry News

Transactions by Enron Made Through Small Utilities

LCG, June 6, 2002--In testimony before California state senators yesterday, consultant Robert McCullough, of Portland, Oregon, said that Enron used trades with members of the Northern California Power Agency to evade regulatory detection of manipulative trading strategies.

McCullough said the NCPA was only one of various trading partners used by Enron to create the illusion of impending congestion on the California transmission grid. The agency's members include 23 public utilities, many of which rely on the NCPA for electric power services. "All told, Enron's schemes included a number of other parties, selected for their transmission access, location and ability to obscure regulatory review," McCullough told a panel investigating the blackouts that took place in 2001. The Independent System Operator ordered rolling blackouts of different areas of the state in order to prevent a system-wide collapse.

John Fistolera, the NCPA's legislative director, said, "As far as we knew, the movement of generation over those lines was to the benefit of the statewide grid." A sales division manager, Larry Owens of Silicon Valley Power, based in Santa Clara, said Silicon Valley Power had not utilized the wholesale services provided by the NCPA. Palo Alto's spokeswoman, Linda Clerkson, said the municipal utility had no comment, when contacted by the Sacramento Bee.

The appearance of congestion could have been used to the advantage of traders, because of a rule imposed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that required payments to energy providers for not loading lines with their generation. The ISO asked that the rule be dropped.

"The schemes appear to be simple comercial fraud since, by design, no actual generation was ever envisaged as running to support the schedules filed with the ISO. Stripped of their complexities, these schemes are simply a modern form of check kiting," McCullough testified. The ISO, which would receive allegedly fraudulent schedules of generation and demand, would attempt to curtail transactions or preserve reliability for most of the state by imposing rolling blackouts.

According to Frank Wolak, an economist at Stanford University quoted in the Sacramento Bee, despite what he termed "just standard trading strategies," the ability of generators to withhold power from the grid could cause more serious reliability problems as well as spiraling prices.
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