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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

Exorbitant Natural Gas Prices Keep New Plants Off Line

LCG, April 8, 2003Recent unusually high natural gas prices are keeping newly built power plants from starting up.

Plant owners and operators say that they cannot profitably operate plants in current economic conditions and may have to wait until the summer, when demand increases.

Current gas prices are roughly $5 per million Btu, and over this past winter prices reached record levels.

Most new plants built over the last few years have been natural gas-fired, a popular choice because of efficiency, local production of fuel, and cleaner emissions. Several natural gas-fired plants are also currently under construction, and roughly 300,000 MW of natural gas-fired capacity has been projected to come on line between 1998 and 2007. Deregulation efforts in many states encouraged the new construction, and many companies assumed that natural gas prices would remain stable when they initially planned the plants' construction.

According to some in industry, the cost of operating a plant is currently higher than simply buying power.

While many new plants are gas-fired, gas and oil plants comprise only a fifth of U.S. capacity. Coal and nuclear plants still dominate, generating some 70 percent of total capacity. Hydroelectric, wind, solar, biomass and others make up just 10 percent.

Companies like Williams Cos. and PPL Corp. have either kept new plants off line or even requested to take plants off line. Other companies have delayed or halted construction of new plants in order to wait for better market conditions.

Some U.S. companies are looking into liquified natural gas, an investment previously thought by some to be unnecessarily costly.

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