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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: Here Come the New Power Plants
LCG, June 27, 2001Three new power plants with combined capacity of nearly 1,400 megawatts will join the California grid over the next 10 days, and all of these plants have been in development since Pete Wilson was governor.Gov. Gray Davis will preside today over the startup of a unit of the Sunrise cogeneration project near Bakersfield, and may take credit for adding the new generation to the state's portfolio. But the 320 megawatt facility has been in the planning stages for almost three years.Sunrise, a joint venture between Edison International Inc. subsidiary Edison Mission Energy and Texaco Power and Gasification, consists of two natural gas-fueled simple cycle unites, each capable of producing 160 megawatts of power. Unit 2 will join the grid today when Davis throws a switch, Unit 1 will begin operation tomorrow.Next week, Calpine Corp. will begin commercial operation at its 500 megawatt Sutter plant and its 559 megawatt Los Medanos Energy Center. Both were being planned before Davis became governor in 1998.Major power project developers, including Calpine and Edison Mission Energy, have long complained about the interminable delays suffered in the California Energy Commission permitting process, which they said was the slowest in the nation.The Wall Street Journal said that in California the NIMBY, or "not in my backyard" syndrome had given way to BANANA, or "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody."But now, after three or more years of waiting, the first new significant power plant in 13 years will come on line, and the Energy Commission is proud of its achievement. "This really is a red-letter day," said Steve Larson, executive director of the Energy Commission. "This is the first of the major power plants to come on line that we've been planning for."The California Independent System Operator, which on a hot day agonizes over a 50 megawatt peaking plant, is happy with the new facilities. "It's very encouraging for us as the operator of the state's grid to see new generation of this magnitude come on line to help manage the shortfalls expected this summer," said ISO vice president for grid operations Jim Detmers.While Sunrise will operate in simple cycle initially, plans are to upgrade the plant to combined-cycle operation, which will boost its output to 585 megawatts be the summer of 2003. Both Sutter and Los Medanos were designed as combined-cycle baseload plants.Before the completion of these three plants, the newest generating station in California was a "qualifying facility," the 385 megawatt ARCO Watson Cogeneration Project in Los Angeles.Lower Grid Voltage Could Save PowerPacific Gas & Electric Co., Southern California Edison Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. have agreed in principle to lower the voltage on their portions of the California transmission system from the present level of 120 volts to 117 volts, in a move that could save the equivalent of a major power plant's output of power.According to the companies, customers would be unlikely to notice the difference. State law requires that retail power be delivered at between 114 and 126 volts and most household electric devices run best at about 115 volts, they say."People should see no negative effects at 117 volts," said Larry Conrad, an official of the American National Standards Institute, who added "It sounds like a good deal to me."John Nelson, a spokesman for PG&E, said "The utilities agreed to analyze the test results from the past several weeks and use them to determine on a circuit-by-circuit basis where additional voltage conservation can occur, and then implement that conservation wherever practical."The changeover should take weeks, or even months. Nelson said PG&E workers must go out and manually adjust most of the company's 700 substations and many of its 2,900 circuits. SoCal Ed and SDG&E will have to do the same.The reduced voltage idea grew out of experiments conducted at PG&E's San Ramon testing center in April, under guidance of Bill Wattenburg, a nuclear physicist and former professor of electrical engineering at the University of California in Berkeley.Metcalf Energy Center Clears San Jose CouncilThe San Jose (Calif.) City Council, which once unanimously rejected a hometown power plant developer's plans for a 600 megawatt generating station which would be located in a rural area on the south side of town, just beyond the junk yards, last night gave the facility its blessing by a 10-1 vote.The Metcalf Energy Center, which was proposed by Calpine Corp. of San Jose and Bechtel Enterprises Inc., still requires final clearance from the Energy Commission, but members of the commission as well as Gov. Davis are firmly behind the new facility.Support for Metcalf from every major company in Silicon Valley except Cisco Systems which was planning a new "campus" near the site, as well as backing by the Sierra Club and other mainstream environmental organizations helped the council decide in the plant's favor.Calpine said construction would begin as soon as the Energy Commission says "go," which could mean this summer.
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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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