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News
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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
New Generation Records for Cook Nuclear Plant
LCG, March 27, 2013--Indiana Michigan Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Electric Power (AEP), announced earlier this week that its Cook Nuclear Plant Unit 1 will break its previous records for total generation, capacity factor and consecutive days online when it starts its 24th refueling outage Wednesday.
The 518 consecutive day run since the prior refueling outage beats the 1994 record of 471 days. Running continuously between refueling outages is known in the industry as "a breaker-to-breaker run" as the unit's output circuit breakers remained connected to the transmission grid for the entire 18-month fuel cycle. The projected total fuel cycle generation of 12,970,576 MWH and capacity factor of 101.3 percent are also records for Unit 1. The capacity factor exceeded 100 percent through gains in efficiencies given lower than normal lake water temperatures.
Cook Nuclear Plant is located in southwest Michigan. The net generating capacity of Unit 1 and Unit 2 is 1,030 MW and 1,077 MW respectively. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) renewed the operating licenses of both reactors. With the renewal, the operating license for Unit 1 will expire in 2034, and the license for Unit 2 will expire in 2037.
"Unit 2 also just completed a breaker-to-breaker run. So both Cook units are running very well, in fact, better than ever," stated AEP's Chief Nuclear Officer and Senior Vice President. "It's a tribute to the safety and operational focus of the entire organization, and also the fact that we are doing the right work with quality during our outages."
The current outage work will include: refueling the reactor, performing regular maintenance and testing work, plus the installation of a new control room annunciator system and two Unit Auxiliary Transformers. In each control room, there are almost 1,600 annunciators used as an indicator of the status of equipment or systems. The new digital computer-screen system will replace existing push-button analog controls. The new Unit Auxiliary Transformers reduce voltage on a small portion of the output of the main generator to power plant equipment during normal operation.
According to AEP, those two projects are part of the $1 billion Life Cycle Management project that replaces and upgrades various systems and equipment on both Cook units with the latest technologies. "This investment in Cook not only increases safety margins, but will provide our customers predictably low-cost and reliable generation for an additional 20-years past the original licensed life of the plant," stated AEP's Chief Nuclear Officer and Senior Vice President.
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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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