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News
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LCG, June 4, 2025--Energy Vault Holdings Inc. (Energy Vault) and Jupiter Power (Jupiter) today announced the signing of an agreement for the supply of an additional battery energy storage system (BESS) at a Jupiter site in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region. The initial BESS project, located near Fort Stockton, Texas, was completed in July 2024, with a storage capacity 100 MW/200 MWh. The new BESS project will add another 100 MW/200 MWh of capacity. Construction has commenced, and the project is expected to achieve commercial operations by the end of this summer.
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LCG, May 30, 2025--NuScale Power Corporation (NuScale), a leading provider of advanced small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology, yesterday announced that it has received design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its uprated 77 MW power modules. NuScale states that it remains the only SMR technology company with design approval from the NRC, and the company remains on track for deployment by 2030, with 50- and 77-MW SMR options.
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Press Release
Transmission Investment Valuation: Weighing Project Benefits
LCG Consulting, Los Altos, California, March 1st, 2004 – Many parts of the world have been moving away from the vertically integrated monopoly provision of electricity services, towards “market liberalization” with numerous suppliers and consumers interacting in a flexible, decentralized and competitive manner. Electrical transmission networks play key roles as “highways” for this commerce, but liberalization complicates transmission planning so that it is increasingly important to have realistic and objective methods for assessing the value of transmission investments.
In a restructured electricity industry, the market realities faced by generation and transmission investors are exceedingly complex. Sophisticated analysis and modeling faces many challenges. The first analytical challenge is an accurate representation of the various markets and the bidding behavior they encourage. To maximize profits, therefore, a plant has to bid its true opportunity cost, which is the greater of its marginal production cost and the expected prices in the different product, temporal, and spatial markets.
A second analytical challenge concerns the locational dimension. The value of energy is different across the power system, and an accurate representation of the physics of power systems is thus quite central. A load flow representation of the system is a detailed and accurate picture of the transmission lines, their links to one another, and the flow of power in and around them. For example, an optimal power flow (OPF) is a traditional engineering tool for analyzing the dispatch of plants in order to meet loads across the system. A load flow model could be used to evaluate two alternative investments, one in generation and another in transmission, and determine how they affect current and future prices across the network and for different products.
A third and final analytical challenge is the inherent uncertainty in complex phenomena. Electricity markets are subject to severe fluctuations in fuel prices (such as oil and natural gas), emission, loads, hydro availability, and regulatory interventions. Volatility analysis is crucial to the avoidance of costly investment mistakes. Moreover, investments in generation (and to some extent, transmission) are flexible and, in the event new information is obtained, can be postponed. A real options approach to investment under uncertainty has to be deployed in order to take advantage of the plant’s flexibility and acquisition of fresh commercial information.
In summary, the impact of generation and transmission investments on power prices is not easy to assess, and a large number of factors have to be taken into account. Only an integrated transmission and generation representation of an electric power system can do a proper job of capturing the key market, physical, regulatory, and climactic drivers underlying market outcomes.
LCG recently conducted a cost-benefit study of transmission upgrade using UPLAN Network Power Model with SCUC/SCED. A paper was published in The Electricity Journal March 2004 issue based on the simulation and results of this study.
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UPLAN-NPM
The Locational Marginal Price Model (LMP) Network Power Model
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UPLAN-ACE
Day Ahead and Real Time Market Simulation
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UPLAN-G
The Gas Procurement and Competitive Analysis System
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PLATO
Database of Plants, Loads, Assets, Transmission...
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