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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

California Absent from Western Governors' Grid Talks

LCG, Aug. 14, 2001--Governors of Western states, together with members of the Bush administration, are meeting through today in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and the two top items on their agenda are curbing wildfires and developing steps to endure adequate and cost-effective electric transmission.

The governor of California, which prides itself on being the world's fifth-largest economy, was not in attendance, though his state has much to learn about both wildfires and the transmission of electric power. There was no immediate explanation for Gray Davis' absence, but there was some resentment in Coeur d'Alene.

Washington Gov. Gary Locke was also absent, though the meeting is only a few miles from his state border, and he too was missed.

"They should be here. No one state can be an island so we need to work together," said Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, host to the conference and chairman of the Western Governors Association.

Western states other than California have been hit hard by that state's electricity crisis. Despite a long-running drought in the hydropower-dependent Pacific Northwest, the Clinton administration last year forced the states to sell power to the Golden State -- power that was needed at home. As a result, wholesale electricity prices soared in Oregon and Washington.

Then, when California successfully lobbied the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to impose price controls on wholesale power prices, the price caps were applied to all the Western states. Some of those states had backed a free market.

There is also resentment that California, whose energy crunch is due solely to inadequate generation supply, has for more than a decade been loath to license any new generation sources not powered by the wind or the sun.

Yesterday, the governors' conference signed a memorandum of understanding with several federal agencies to move forward on a detailed analysis of transmission enhancements for the West. Wyoming Gov. Jim Heringer, one of the Association's co-leads on energy issues, pointed out that a regional transmission concept would allow states to sell power into areas not dominated by California.

Jack Davis, president of Pinnacle West Capital Corp., which is parent company for Arizona Public Service Co., and Marsha Smith, an Idaho regulator, produced a report commissioned by the Association showing several approaches to developing a regional transmission system. Costs vary from about $2 billion to as much as $12 billion, depending on what kind of power plants are built.

If, as seems to be the case, new power plants are to be gas-fueled units built near heavily populated areas, transmission requirements would be far less expensive to build than if they were coal-fired units built near the coal deposits in Wyoming and Montana, with their output transmitted over long distances.

Alan Richardson, chief executive officer of PacifiCorp, a unit of Scottish Power Plc, is in Coeur d'Alene for the conference and he noted that "A lot of people are building power plants, almost nobody is building transmission." He said development of a regional system would create more certainty and encourage development.

But it isn't that easy, according to Pinnacle's Davis, who said there is a lot of "not in my backyard" to overcome in transmission, which stretches across lots of property. "It is much more difficult to site a transmission line than a power plant," he said.

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