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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 Capsule: Energy Costs Imperil Welfare Programs
LCG, June 11, 2001The $7 billion that California has spent on buying electricity since the first of the year had to come from somewhere and the state's county welfare directors think they know where.Some counties with heavy welfare rolls have attacked the problem by providing day care centers, assistance in transportation and job training, in an attempt to keep people from going on welfare in the first place. The state has rewarded those counties where welfare rolls have been reduced to the tune of $1.9 billion but now the counties fear that the source of funding will dry up as a result of the energy crisis. Bruce Wagstaffe, deputy director of the California Department of Social Services, confirmed that the incentives were not included in the budget, but said it was because Gov. Gray Davis wanted to ensure that the service in the state's welfare-to-work program were funded.Orange Country Welfare Director Angelo Doti said some of his county's programs are in place and others have been put out to bid. If funding is cut off, he told the Los Angeles Times, "It makes us look insincere."Among the imperiled Orange County programs is its summer Youth Employment Program, a two-year, $7.5 million effort to teach job skills to 2,212 teenagers each year. (We did the arithmetic: That's $1,700 to teach a kid how to operate a shovel or a file cabinet.)In San Diego County, programs such as a computer laboratory for teens on welfare could be closed, according to Joan Zinser, deputy director of the county's health and human services agency.ISO Asks FERC to Revoke Generators' Market Rate AuthorityThe California Independent System Operator has filed a series of petitions with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking the agency to revoke the authority to charge market-based wholesale electricity rates for four companies that own power plants in the state.Under California's electric deregulation law, the companies were allowed to sell power at uncontrolled prices. The power had to be sold through the now-defunct California Power Exchange under a system that guaranteed all power producers the highest rate paid for power even if some bid power into the exchange for a fraction of that price.The power producers did not create that system, nor did FERC. It was created by Californians of all political stripe, but now they want to shift the blame to outsiders."Three years ago, FERC granted authority to charge market-based rates to these companies in the belief it would foster just and reasonable rates in California," said Charles Robinson, the ISO's top lawyer, forgetting his history.What FERC did three years ago was give California what it wanted by exempting the generators from price controls for three years. Those exemptions are up for renewal, and the ISO sees that as an opportunity to return to regulation of wholesale electricity.The four companies are Duke Energy Corp., Dynegy Inc., Mirant Corp. and Reliant Energy Inc. PG&E Plan to Axe Oak Trees OpposedPacific Gas & Electric Co., literally insolvent and mired in bankruptcy court, is still an operating utility. Even though it has no say in how its transmission lines are used Cal-ISO runs the system the company still must ensure their reliability.PG&E also still owns and operates the 2,000 megawatt Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, the most reliable source of electricity in the state. It wants to get that power to its customers, to keep the lights in 2 million households burning.Power from Diablo Canyon is carried over 500 kilovolt transmission lines running eastward from the power plant over rolling coastal hills. Under those wires are dense growths of scrub oak and greasewood. "The lines are right above a very, very heavy fuel load," said Bill Roake, a PG&E spokesman. "If there is a fire, you could have lines disrupted coming out of Diablo." The utility wants to thin out that fuel load, and that means cutting down many of the scrub oak trees. Never mind that these are not 75-foot-tall mighty oaks, you mention the words "oak" and "chain-saw" in the same paragraph, you get activists who see magnificent trees with dense round crowns providing shade to Huck Finns fishing in lazy streams.The most common oak in that part of California is the blue oak, Quercus douglasii, which ranges in size from a shrub to maybe 50 feet. A big one has a trunk two or three feet across. There are a few California black oaks (Quercus kelloggii) and California white oaks (Quercus lobata) in the area, and they are grand trees. PG&E would probably spare those unless they were very close to the power lines.There may be some interior live oaks (Quercus wislizenii) and California live oaks (Quercus agrifolia) in the region and we would hope that PG&E would consider moving the lines in the case of the latter, which has a huge bole of a trunk that divides just above the ground, sending thick limbs here and there, sometimes resting on the ground, and providing a canopy that will cover half a football field. They aren't very tall, though. Where were we before we got bogged down in oak trees?The pro-oak forces claim PG&E wants to clear cut 15 miles of transmission corridor so it won't need to do seasonal tree-trimming. The utility says it want to thin out some brushland about two miles long. So long as the two sides can't agree on what they are arguing about, an agreeable solution seems unlikely.But California is not hurting for oak trees. According to the California Oak Foundation, there are 11 million acres of oak woodlands in the state.
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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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