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News
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LCG, August 15, 2025--Xcel Energy announced that the company received state approval yesterday from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to extend operations of the Prairie Island nuclear plant through the early 2050s. Prairie Island has two units that have a combined generating capacity of 1,100 MW. The units’ current operating licenses expire in 2033 and 2034.
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LCG, August 7, 2025--Portland General Electric (PGE) today announced the completion of three, four-hour lithium-ion utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Oregon, adding 475 MW and more than 1.9 GWh of dispatchable capacity to serve the Portland metro area. Each of these BESS facilities can deliver power during peak demand or when other electric generating facilities are limited, which improves system flexibility, reliability and costs.
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Industry News
Federal Government uses UPLAN model to examine price volatility in ERCOT
LCG, October 11, 2022--The U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, released its latest supplement to the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) in the Texas market, assessing various possible scenarios using LCG’s UPLAN NPM model, with a special focus on the effects on wholesale power prices and market conditions.
To balance the supply of electricity and power demand, grid operators must make sure that there is an adequate supply to meet demand in an uncertain future. Texas's grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), allows the energy component of wholesale prices to increase substantially when the resource reserve is low, called scarcity pricing. This price volatility provides an incentive for new capacity investments.
In the EIA’s report, four scenarios were explored: 1) Normal levels of load and wind generation, 2) High levels of peak electricity load, 3) Low levels of wind generation, and 4) Simultaneous occurrence of high peak load and low wind generation. These scenarios are similar to those ERCOT considers in its Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy.
EIA used UPLAN and LCG’s PLATO database to develop the forecasts for electricity supply. The resultant dataset, including the fuel consumption, the electricity generation and the wholesale electricity price were then fed into EIA’s own model, the U.S. Short-Term Energy Model, to produce the final results.
Among other findings, EIA’s investigation showed pricing is sensitive to the variable cost of generation in the early morning and at the end of the day. When the demand starts to rise during the midday, electricity prices can rise significantly above the marginal costs. Scarcity pricing is more likely when wind generation is low than when the demand is high. And the impact of low wind and high load on prices varies across the ERCOT region.
To read the full EIA study visit https:/www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/special/supplements/2022/2022_sp_03.pdf
See previous press release for more on EIA's modeling work using the UPLAN model.
EIA Releases Study on Drought Effects on California Electricity Generation and Power Market using UPLAN Mode
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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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