EnergyOnline
Services

RSS FEED

EnergyOnline.com rss

News

RWE and Indiana Michigan Power Company Sign Long-term PPA for 200 MW Wind Project

LCG, December 18, 2025--RWE and Indiana Michigan Power Company (I&M), an American Electric Power (AEP) company, today announced their partnering to provide new wind power generation capacity online to meet Indiana’s growing electricity demand. The companies signed a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for the total output from RWE’s 200 MW Prairie Creek wind project in Blackford County, Indiana. I&M will purchase electricity from the wind project, which will further diversify its portfolio and be consistent with its all-of-the-above strategy to secure generation for its rapidly growing electricity demand.

Read more

NRC Renews Operating Licenses for Constellation's Nuclear Reactors at Clinton and Dresden Facilities

LCG, December 16, 2025--The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced today that it has renewed the operating licenses of Constellation LLC’s Clinton Unit 1 in Clinton, Illinois, and Dresden Units 2 and 3, near Morris, Illinois, for an additional 20 years beyond the current expiration dates. The combined capacity of these three, Illinois-based nuclear units is 2,925 MW, and the operating license extension will enable the units to generate carbon-free power through about 2050.

Read more

Industry News

California Power Mess may Hit U.S. Taxpayers

LCG, Jan. 31, 2001Because the federal government used its emergency power to order generators of electricity to continue selling power to California utilities despite their impending insolvency, U.S. taxpayers may be stuck with the bill, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee said this morning.

"In the event California cannot repay generators for this power, the federal government is going to have to meet that obligation, because this was an order of the federal government," Sen. Frank Murkowski said at a committee hearing on the causes of California's power problems.

When it became apparent that power suppliers, principally in the Pacific Northwest, would cease sending power to California, then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson used his emergency powers to order the deliveries continued. The Bush administration has extended the order until February 7, but has warned that there will be no further extensions.

Murkowski also deplored the "not-in-my-backyard" attitude of Californians toward the construction of new power plants to meet the state's insufficiency of generation, which he said was a major cause of the mess. "Electricity does not appear magically at the plug," the Alaska Republican said.

No witnesses from the federal or state governments appeared at today's hearing, but those who spoke generally agreed that two major flaws in California's electric deregulation scheme caused today's crisis.

The first was creating a plan that lacked incentive for new sources of power to meet increasing demand. One witness noted that while Silicon Valley imports more than three quarters of its power, it has fought the building of new power plants within view of its own factories. That was an allusion to the City of San Jose and Cisco Systems objecting so far successfully to the development by Calpine Corp. of a modern, natural gas-fueled 600 megawatt power plant in a rural area near where Cisco is building a new facility.

The other flaw was allowing power producers to charge utilities market based prices for power while forcing the utilities to resell that power to its retail customers at rates which were fixed at 10 percent below the rates that existed at the time the restructuring law was passed.

No real attempt was made at the hearing to fix blame for the problem, it generally being realized that everybody involved shares responsibility. Steve Frank, chief executive of Southern California Edison Co., said "All of us, including the utilities, were not as insightful as we should have been about the way the market would work and the way demand and supply would get out of balance in the California economy."

Lawrence Makovich of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, told the panel "It would be a mistake to blame the problems in California on deregulation itself." He pointed to the difference between deregulation in California and Texas, where development of new power plants has been encouraged. In California, he said, "investment in new power supply (is) neither possible nor profitable."

Copyright © 2025 LCG Consulting. All rights reserved. Terms and Copyright
UPLAN-NPM
The Locational Marginal Price Model (LMP) Network Power Model
Uniform Storage Model
A Battery Simulation Model
UPLAN-ACE
Day Ahead and Real Time Market Simulation
UPLAN-G
The Gas Procurement and Competitive Analysis System
PLATO
Database of Plants, Loads, Assets, Transmission...
CAISO CRR Auctions
Monthly Price and Congestion Forecasting Service