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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

Davis Renews SoCal Ed Bailout Effort

LCG, August 20, 2001--With California lawmakers returning to Sacramento from their summer recess today, Gov. Gray Davis is attempting to revive his campaign to save Southern California Edison Co., the state's second largest utility, from bankruptcy.

The largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is already in bankruptcy, having filed for protection under Chapter 11 in April. SoCal Ed has been teetering on the edge ever since, kept afloat by hopes that the state legislature would ratify a deal with Davis for the state to acquire its transmission facilities for $2.76 billion, which the company could use to pay off most of its creditors.

That deal included an August 15 deadline agreed to by the utility and the governor, but the lawmakers were on vacation when the deadline came and went. SoCal Ed said it would keep its fingers crossed for a few more days.

Yesterday, Davis' office staged a conference call that included the new head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, an education official, a lobbyist for utility employees and a self-appointed consumer watchdog, all of whom could be depended upon to say that bankruptcy for SoCal Ed would be harmful to consumers.

David Wiggs, general manager of the LADWP, was head of El Paso Electric Co. when it went through Chapter 11 in the late 1980s. He said "I believe bankruptcy is a terrible process for a utility. A court is charged with the responsibility of protecting creditors. They are not there to protect consumers."

Kevin Gordon, executive director of the California Association of School Business Officials, saw SoCal Ed's viability as necessary to the financial health of California. "If we don't make some bold moves to get the state out of the power buying business, it is going to affect our ability to sell bonds on Wall Street," he said.

Virginia Jarrow of the Consumer Coalition of California agreed with Wiggs that a bankruptcy judge has a primary duty to creditors, at the expense of consumers.

And Art Carter, an official of the Coalition of Utility Employees, said a bankruptcy could adversely affect reliability by preventing SoCal Ed from investing in transmission upgrades. If the legislature allows Davis to buy the utility's transmission system, it will be the state that has to do the investing.

But Carter's real concern was the welfare of utility workers. "The employees are very concerned," he said. "Many of them have their pensions very much tied up in the company's stock."

The legislature won't have much time to bail out SoCal Ed, even if it is of a mind to. The now-rested lawmakers have in them only four weeks of energy as the current session will adjourn on September 14, and there are other things to attend to, such as the once-a-decade gerrymandering of state and federal political districts.

"From August 20 to September 15, I've already told my family I'm not coming home," said Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, a Southern California Democrat. "I was trying to get the Edison issue resolved before the break so we could focus on redistricting."

"(Redistricting) is going to dominate this calendar," Hertzberg said. "It's going to take a lot of time."

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