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Oklo and Siemens Energy Sign Agreement to Accelerate Power Conversion System for New SMR in Idaho

LCG, November 19, 2025--Oklo Inc. and Siemens Energy announced today that the parties have signed a binding contract for the design and delivery of the power conversion system for Oklo’s Aurora-INL (Idaho National Laboratory) nuclear small modular reactor (SMR). The agreement authorizes Siemens Energy to begin engineering and design work to expedite procurement of long-lead components and to initiate the manufacturing process for the power conversion system. Oklo’s expertise in advanced fission technology will be combined with Siemens Energy’s extensive industry experience with steam turbine and generator systems, with the ultimate goal of generating carbon-free, reliable electricity.

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NERC's New Winter Reliability Assessment Raises Concerns for Elevated Risk of Insufficient Supplies to Meet Demand in Extreme Operating Conditions

LCG, November 19, 2025--NERC yesterday released its 2025–2026 Winter Reliability Assessment (WRA), which concludes "much of North America is again at an elevated risk of having insufficient energy supplies to meet demand in extreme operating conditions." The WRA does state that resources are adequate for normal winter peak demand, but extended, wide-area cold snaps will be challenging.

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Industry News

FERC Forced to Release Report on Williams and AES Communications

LCG, Nov. 15, 2002--Conversations transcribed in a Federal Energy Regualtory Commission report detail what appears to have been an agreement to keep a Southern California power plant from providing power, which allowed Williams to sell power at a higher-than-expected price to the California Independent System Operator.

Williams had hoped to avoid the release of the FERC report, which FERC had earlier warned it would release unless the company agreed to erase $8 million in charges to the CAISO, which contested them as unwarranted. Although Williams agreed not to pursue the charges, a public-records lawsuit brought by The Wall Street Journal against the FERC compelled the report's release. Representatives for Williams and AES responded to the report by characterizing their communications in May 2000 as well-known and not deserving of attention. Williams settled a lawsuit brought by California this week, rewriting long-term contracts with the state to avoid further legal action.

The conversations between the companies concerned the AES Alamitos plant, from which Williams was buying and marketing power. Any power that could not be delivered as planned would and did bring a price of $750 per megawatt-hour, rather than the price of $63 in the schedule. In this case, units within the same plant provided power because the units specified in the schedule were on outage for maintenance. The additional cost to the CAISO over a fifteen-day period was estimated at $10 million.

Rhonda Morgan of Williams was quoted as saying to an AES employee at the plant, "it wouldn't hurt Williams' feelings if the outage ran long." The president of Williams Energy Marketing & Trading, Bill Hobbs, said that the release of the information against the wishes of FERC "doesn't add anything to the dialogue...", and said that AES received no compensation based on the communications.
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