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LCG Publishes 2024 Annual Outlook for Texas Electricity Market (ERCOT)

LCG, October 10, 2023 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2024, based on the most likely weather, market, transmission, and generator conditions.

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LCG Publishes 2024 Annual Outlook for Texas Electricity Market (ERCOT)

LCG, October 10, 2023 – LCG Consulting (LCG) has released its annual outlook of the ERCOT wholesale electricity market for 2024, based on the most likely weather, market, transmission, and generator conditions.

Read more

Industry News

Bankruptcy Might Not be All Bad for California Utilities

LCG, Jan. 4, 2001Though Robert Glynn Jr., chairman and chief executive of PG&E Corp. says bankruptcy "would be unthinkable," he and others are thinking about it. PG&E Corp.'s utility subsidiary Pacific Gas & Electric Co., along with the Southern California Edison Co. unit of Edison International Inc. were pushed closer to insolvency yesterday when it was proposed that they be allowed a one cent increase in what they charge for a kilowatt-hour of electricity.

Bankruptcy would wipe out the companies' shareholders investments in the utilities. That would please self-appointed consumer watchdogs, but those investments have been two-thirds wiped out already. The unfortunate part of that is many of those shareholders are older, retired people who in the past depended on the reliability of utility dividends as much as the state depends on reliability of electric power.

But bankruptcy filings by the companies in federal bankruptcy courts would provide a venue in which the utilities' pleadings could be scrutinized in the light of the law rather than the heat of populist emotions.

Bankruptcy filing would not put the companies out of business, nor would it cut off power to their customers. Bankruptcy would not interrupt the revenue flow such as it is to either company. What it would do is protect the companies from creditors for a period of time during which a plan is worked out, with court approval, to pay off debts and keep the firms operating.

Creditors would be prevented from seizing assets, which would damage the utilities' ability to continue serving their customers. Would-be litigators would have to wait on the sidelines before filing their class-action lawsuits. In other words, bankruptcy would buy a period of peace for PG&E and SoCal Edison.

Most important, bankruptcy would provide a forum for resolving the problem that drove the companies to that point the $9 billion they have paid for electricity which was delivered to customers who have not paid for it. A member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has predicted how that will turn out.

Last month, FERC commissioner William Massey noted the companies' plight and said "Some day soon a federal court, when asked, will declare that utilities are entitled to recover these high wholesale costs from their customers."

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