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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 Regulators Seek to ShiftPower Costs from SoCal Ed to PG&E

LCG, Aug. 28, 2001--California's top energy regulator yesterday introduced a plan that could, over the next two years, shift as much as $500 million in state power purchases from Southern California Edison Co. to Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Loretta Lynch, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, issued a handful of draft decisions by the commission staff, one of which would allocate among the state's three investor-owned utilities, the costs of repaying and servicing $12.5 billion in debt the state plans to issue to provide funds for power purchases by the California Department of Water Resources.

The CDWR had proposed charging the utilities the same amount per customer, but that was too simple for the CPUC, which claims it costs more to buy power on behalf of PG&E than it does for SoCal Ed.

PG&E issued a statement yesterday evening condemning the proposal. "If the CPUC's draft decision of CDWR's revenue requirement is correct as reported, the CPUC is proposing to shift over $500 million of unreviewed CDWR power costs to PG&E's customers from Southern California customers," the utility complained.

"If adopted by the CPUC, this would lock our customers into 40 percent to 55 percent higher rates for DWR power over the next 10 years, compared to customers of Southern California Edison and SDG&E," the company said in its statement. "This massive cost shift was not proposed by DWR, discriminates against PG&E's customers, and has not been subject to public review, due process, or cost justification by DWR or the CPUC."

PG&E pointed out that it and other parties have repeatedly asked the water agency to hold a public hearing to justify its revenue requirements, but those requests have fallen on deaf ears. The utility has asked the California Superior Court in Sacramento to order such hearings, without which "we and our customers will not have a full and fair opportunity to review CDWR's multi-billion rate demands."

Some in Sacramento felt that PG&E was being penalized for not cooperating with Gov. Gray Davis when the governor was trying to buy its transmission assets in a move that might have kept the company out of bankruptcy. SoCal Ed agreed to sell its wires to the state for $2.76 billion in a deal that is now unraveling, but PG&E placed an $11 billion price tag on its transmission system and ultimately sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

"You have to go along to get along," said one statehouse observer, "and PG&E chose to buck the governor."

Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio denied that PG&E was being punished for choosing bankruptcy earlier this year rather than cooperate with the Davis administration on a possible rescue plan. "It's all based on numbers and math; politics is not in the equation," he averred.

Others note that John Bryson, chief executive of SoCal Ed's parent company, Edison International Inc., was president of the California Public Utilities Commission from 1979 to 1982, appointed by Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown; before that he served as chairman of the California Water Resources Control Board; fresh out of school, he co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970.

More recently, Bryson was appointed by Davis to the Board of Governors of the California Independent System Operator. He is clearly a man who knows how to "go along."

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