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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

Texas Will Move Forward With Electric Deregulation;. 'Everything California Did was Wrong,' Lawmaker Says

LCG, Jan. 15, 2001Problems with California's deregulated electricity market may be deterring efforts by other states to restructure their own power sectors, but not Texas', CBS Market Watch reported over the weekend.

Texas state Sen. David Sibley, who wrote the legislation that will open the Texas retail electricity market to competition next January 1, said of California's power crisis "There's a lot of smart people out there, trying to do the right things, and everything they did was wrong."

While California politicians and bureaucrats have been blaming out-of-state power producers for the high wholesale electricity prices that have driven the state's two major utilities to the door of bankruptcy, there is a growing awareness that the economic law of supply and demand has played a part.

In 1995, Texas passed a wholesale electric deregulation law that has stimulated power plant construction, said Tom Baker, president of TXU Electric & Gas Co., the largest utility in the Lone Star State. But according to Baker "It's been difficult to site and locate plants in California, so there hasn't been any significant capacity added in the last 10 years."

According to the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the state has added more than five times as much generating capacity as California just since 1995 and construction of nearly 14,000 megawatts of capacity has begun.

"The lack of supply in California goes back to before deregulation was even discussed," saidBaker. "Unfortunately, you can't build a power plant in a few days, and there hasn't been any incentive tobuild them." He noted that when the plants in development are built out Texas will have reserve margins around 25 percent.

Because California relies on power imported from other states, its reserves are often less than zero.

Sibley said that another significant difference between California and Texas is the way the two state's laws structured the market. In California, utilities, divested of their own generation resources, were required to make all of their power purchases through the California Power Exchange, an institution similar to a stock market, and long-term contracts were forbidden.

In Texas, utilities in a deregulated environment can enter into bilateral contracts with sellers ofpower. They can enter into any length of contract, including forward buys, which helps protectthe utility against price fluctuations.

"Utilities can put together a portfolio of power, similar to a stock portfolio, to hedge their risks," Baker said.

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