Tessera solar plant injunction granted

PG&E Bankruptcy Plan outlines wildfire victims compensation via a $13.5B trust funded by cash and stock, aiming CPUC and court approval before June 30 to access the state wildfire insurance fund and finalize settlement.

Key Points

A regulator-approved plan funding a $13.5B wildfire victims trust with cash and PG&E stock to exit bankruptcy.

✅ $13.5B trust split between cash and PG&E shares

✅ Targets CPUC and court approval to meet June 30 deadline

✅ Accesses state wildfire insurance fund for future risks

Pacific Gas & Electric's plan for getting out of bankruptcy has won overwhelming support from the victims of deadly Northern California wildfires ignited by the utility's fraying electrical grid, while some have pursued mega-fire lawsuits through the courts as well, despite concerns that they will be shortchanged by a $13.5 billion fund that's supposed to cover their losses.

The company announced the preliminary results of the vote on Monday without providing a specific tally. Those numbers are supposed to be filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali by Friday.

The backing of the wildfire victims keeps PG&E on track to meet a June 30 deadline to emerge from bankruptcy in time to qualify for a coverage from a California wildfire insurance fund created to help protect the utility from getting into financial trouble again.

The current bankruptcy case, which began early last year, will require PG&E to pay out about $25.5 billion to cover the devastation caused by its neglect, including a Camp Fire guilty plea that underscored liabilities in court proceedings. It's the second time in less than 20 years that PG&E has filed for bankruptcy.

The backing for PG&E's plan isn't a surprise, even though some of the roughly 80,000 wildfire victims had been trying to rally resistance to what they consider to be a deeply flawed plan. The misgivings mostly center on the massive debt that the utility will take on to finance the plan and uncertainties about the fluctuating value of the $6.75 billion in company stock that comprises half of the $13.5 billion promised them.

As it became apparent that the COVID-19 pandemic would drive the economy into a deep recession, PG&E's shares plunged along with the rest of the stock market during March, even as it announced pandemic response measures for customers and employees during that period. That led one financial expert to estimate the PG&E stock earmarked for the wildfire victims' trust would be worth only $4.85 billion, a nearly 30% markdown.

But PG&E's stock price has rebounded in recent weeks and it's now worth more than it was when the deal setting up the victims' trust was struck last December. The shares surged more than 8% to $12.28 in Monday's late afternoon trading. The stock stood at $9.65 when PG&E reached its settlement the wildfire victims.

Critics of the utility's plan also are upset because the company still hasn't specified when the fire victims will be able to sell the shares. It now seems likely the victims will have to hold the stock through the upcoming wildfire season in Northern California, raising the specter that another calamity caused by the utility's badly outdated equipment, as power line fire reports have underscored, could cause the shares to plummet before they can cash out.

A petition signed by more than 3,100 wildfire victims recently urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to consider pushing back the deadline for qualifying for the state's wildfire from June 30 to late August to allow for more time to revise PG&E's plan, as many also turn to a wildfire assistance program for interim aid while they wait. Newsom's office hasn't responded to inquiry about the plan from The Associated Press.

But the lawyers representing the wildfire victims advised their clients to vote in favor of PG&E's plan, contending that it's the best deal they are going to get.

PG&E still must get its plan approved by the judge supervising its case, and a recent judge order on dividend use underscores the focus on wildfire mitigation. The confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin May 27. The judge, though, has indicated he will give great weight to the wishes of the wildfire victims.

California state regulators also must approve PG&E's plan, amid projections that rates will stabilize in 2025 for customers. A vote on that is scheduled Thursday before the Public Utilities Commission.

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Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity balances renewable energy, stabilizes the grid, and provides large-scale energy storage using reservoirs and reversible turbines, delivering flexible peak power, frequency control, and rapid response to variable wind and solar generation.

Key Points

A reversible hydro system that stores energy by pumping water uphill, then generates flexible peak power.

✅ Balances variable wind and solar with rapid ramping

✅ Stores off-peak electricity in upper reservoirs

✅ Enhances grid stability, frequency control, and reserves

The expense of hydroelectricity is moderately low, making it a serious wellspring of sustainable power. The hydro station burns-through no water, dissimilar to coal or gas plants. The commonplace expense of power from a hydro station bigger than 10 megawatts is 3 to 5 US pennies for every kilowatt hour, and Niagara Falls powerhouse upgrade projects show how modernization can further improve efficiency and reliability. With a dam and supply it is likewise an adaptable wellspring of power, since the sum delivered by the station can be shifted up or down quickly (as meager as a couple of moments) to adjust to changing energy requests.

When a hydroelectric complex is developed, the task creates no immediate waste, and it for the most part has an extensively lower yield level of ozone harming substances than photovoltaic force plants and positively petroleum product fueled energy plants, with calls to invest in hydropower highlighting these benefits. In open-circle frameworks, unadulterated pumped storage plants store water in an upper repository with no normal inflows, while pump back plants use a blend of pumped storage and regular hydroelectric plants with an upper supply that is renewed to a limited extent by common inflows from a stream or waterway.

Plants that don't utilize pumped capacity are alluded to as ordinary hydroelectric plants, and initiatives focused on repowering existing dams continue to expand clean generation; regular hydroelectric plants that have critical capacity limit might have the option to assume a comparable function in the electrical lattice as pumped capacity by conceding yield until required.

The main use for pumped capacity has customarily been to adjust baseload powerplants, however may likewise be utilized to decrease the fluctuating yield of discontinuous fuel sources, while emerging gravity energy storage concepts broaden long-duration options. Pumped capacity gives a heap now and again of high power yield and low power interest, empowering extra framework top limit.

In specific wards, power costs might be near zero or once in a while negative on events that there is more electrical age accessible than there is load accessible to retain it; despite the fact that at present this is infrequently because of wind or sunlight based force alone, expanded breeze and sun oriented age will improve the probability of such events.

All things considered, pumped capacity will turn out to be particularly significant as an equilibrium for exceptionally huge scope photovoltaic age. Increased long-distance bandwidth, including hydropower imports from Canada, joined with huge measures of energy stockpiling will be a critical piece of directing any enormous scope sending of irregular inexhaustible force sources. The high non-firm inexhaustible power entrance in certain districts supplies 40% of yearly yield, however 60% might be reached before extra capaciy is fundamental.

Pumped capacity plants can work with seawater, despite the fact that there are extra difficulties contrasted with utilizing new water. Initiated in 1966, the 240 MW Rance flowing force station in France can incompletely function as a pumped storage station. At the point when elevated tides happen at off-top hours, the turbines can be utilized to pump more seawater into the repository than the elevated tide would have normally gotten. It is the main enormous scope power plant of its sort.

Alongside energy mechanism, pumped capacity frameworks help control electrical organization recurrence and give save age. Warm plants are substantially less ready to react to abrupt changes in electrical interest, and can see higher thermal PLF during periods of reduced hydro generation, conceivably causing recurrence and voltage precariousness.

Pumped storage plants, as other hydroelectric plants, including new BC generating stations, can react to stack changes in practically no time. Pumped capacity hydroelectricity permits energy from discontinuous sources, (for example, sunlight based, wind) and different renewables, or abundance power from consistent base-load sources, (for example, coal or atomic) to be put something aside for times of more popularity.

The repositories utilized with siphoned capacity are tiny when contrasted with ordinary hydroelectric dams of comparable force limit, and creating periods are regularly not exactly a large portion of a day. This technique produces power to gracefully high top requests by moving water between repositories at various heights.

Now and again of low electrical interest, the abundance age limit is utilized to pump water into the higher store. At the point when the interest gets more noteworthy, water is delivered once more into the lower repository through a turbine. Pumped capacity plans at present give the most monetarily significant methods for enormous scope matrix energy stockpiling and improve the every day limit factor of the age framework. Pumped capacity isn't a fuel source, and shows up as a negative number in postings.

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Philippines Nuclear Energy Policy aims to add nuclear power to the energy mix via executive order, meeting rising electricity demand with 24/7 baseload while balancing safety, renewables, and imported fuel dependence in the Philippines.

Key Points

A government plan to include nuclear power in the energy mix to meet demand, ensure baseload, and uphold safety.

✅ Executive order proposed by Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi

✅ Targets 24/7 baseload, rising electricity demand

✅ Balances safety, renewables, and energy security

Phillipines Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi made the proposal during last Monday's Cabinet meeting in Malacaaang. "Secretary Cusi likewise sought the approval of the issuance of a proposed executive order for the inclusion of nuclear power, including next-gen nuclear options in the country's energy mix as the Philippines is expected to the rapid growth in electricity and electricity demand, in which, 24/7 power is essential and necessary," Panelo said in a statement.

Panelo said Duterte would study the energy chief's proposal, as China's nuclear development underscores regional momentum. In the 1960s until the mid 80s, the late president Ferdinand Marcos adopted a nuclear energy program and built the Bataan Nuclear Plant.

The nuclear plant was mothballed after Corazon Aquino became president in 1986. There have been calls to revive the nuclear plant, saying it would help address the Philippines' energy supply issues. Some groups, however, said such move would be expensive and would endanger the lives of people living near the facility, citing Three Mile Island as a cautionary example.

Panelo said proposals to revive the Bataan Nuclear Plant were not discussed during the Cabinet meeting, even as debates like California's renewable classification continue to shape perceptions. Indigenous energy sources natural gas, hydro, coal, oil, geothermal, wind, solar, biomassand ethanol constitute more than half or 59.6%of the Philippines' energy mix.

Imported oil make up 31.7% while imported coal, reflecting the country's coal dependency, contribute about 8.7%.

Imported ethanol make up 0.1% of the energy mix, even as interest in atomic energy rises globally.

In 2018, Duterte said safety should be the priority when deciding whether to tap nuclear energy for the country's power needs, as countries like India's nuclear restart proceed with their own safeguards.

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Northern Ireland No-Deal Power Contingency outlines Whitehall plans to deploy thousands of generators on barges in the Irish Sea, safeguard the electricity market, and avert blackouts if Brexit disrupts imports from the Republic of Ireland.

Key Points

A UK Whitehall plan to prevent NI blackouts by deploying generators and protecting cross-border electricity flows.

✅ Barges in Irish Sea to host temporary power generators

✅ Mitigates loss of EU market access in a no-deal Brexit

✅ Ensures NI supply if Republic cuts electricity exports

Such a scenario could see thousands of electricity generators being requisitioned at short notice and positioned on barges in the Irish Sea, even as Great Britain's generation mix shapes wider supply dynamics, to help keep the region going, a Whitehall document quoted by the Financial Times states.

An emergency operation could see equipment being brought back from places like Afghanistan, where the UK still has a military presence, the newspaper said.

The extreme situation could arise because Northern Ireland shares a single energy market with the Irish Republic, where Irish grid price spikes have heightened concern about stability.

The region relies on energy imports from the Republic because it does not have enough generating capacity itself, and the UK is aiming to negotiate a deal to allow that single electricity market on the island of Ireland to continue post-EU withdrawal, while virtual power plant proposals for UK homes are explored to avoid outages, the FT stated.

However, if no Brexit deal is agreed Whitehall fears suppliers in the Irish Republic could cut off power because the UK would no longer be part of the European electricity market, and a recent short supply warning from National Grid underscores the risk.

In a bid to prevent blackouts in Northern Ireland in a worse case situation the Government would need to put thousands of generators into place, even as an emergency energy plan has reportedly not gone ahead nationwide, according to the report.

And officials fear they may need to commandeer some generators from the military in such a scenario, the FT reports.

An official was quoted by the newspaper as saying the preparations were “gob-smacking”.

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Texas Electricity Market Bailout proposes securitization bonds and ERCOT-backed fees after Winter Storm Uri, spreading costs via ratepayer charges on power bills to stabilize generators, co-ops, and retailers and avert bankruptcies and investor flight.

Key Points

State plan to securitize storm debts via ERCOT fees, adding bill charges to stabilize Texas power firms.

✅ Securitization bonds finance unpaid ancillary services and energy costs

✅ ERCOT fee spreads Winter Storm Uri debts across ratepayers statewide

✅ Aims to prevent bankruptcies, preserve grid reliability, reassure investors

An approximately $2.5 billion plan to bail out Texas’ distressed electricity market from the financial crisis caused by Winter Storm Uri in February has been approved by the Texas House.

The legislation would impose a fee — likely for the next decade or longer — on electricity companies, which would then get passed on to residential and business customers in their power bills, even as some utilities waived certain fees earlier in the crisis.

House lawmakers sent House Bill 4492 to the Senate on Thursday after a 129-15 vote. A similar bill is advancing in the Senate.

Some of the state’s electricity providers and generators are financially underwater in the aftermath of the February power outages, which left millions without power and killed more than 100 people. Electricity companies had to buy whatever power was available at the maximum rate allowed by Texas regulations — $9,000 per megawatt hour — during the week of the storm (the average price for power in 2020 was $22 per megawatt hour). Natural gas fuel prices also spiked more than 700% during the storm.

Several companies are nearing default on their bills to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the Texas power grid that covers most of the state and facilitates financial transactions in it.

Rural electric cooperatives were especially hard hit; Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, which supplies electricity to 1.5 million customers, filed for bankruptcy citing a $1.8 billion debt to ERCOT.

State Rep. Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, the bill’s author, said a second bailout bill will be necessary during the current legislative session for severely distressed electric cooperatives.

“This is a financial crisis, and it’s a big one,” James Schaefer, a senior managing director at Guggenheim Partners, an investment bank, told lawmakers at a House State Affairs Committee hearing in early April. He warned that more bankruptcies would cause higher costs to customers and hurt the state’s image in the eyes of investors.

“You’ve got to free the system,” Schaefer said. “It’s horrible that a bunch of folks have to pay, but it’s a system-wide failure. If you let a bunch of folks crash, it’s not a good look for your state.”

If approved by the Senate and Gov. Greg Abbott, a newly-created Texas Electric Securitization Corp. would use the money raised from the fees for bonds to help pay the companies’ debts, including costs for ancillary services, a financial product that helps ensure power is continuously generated and improve electricity reliability across the grid.

Paddie told his colleagues Wednesday that he could not yet estimate how long the new fee would be imposed, but during committee hearings lawmakers estimated it’s likely to be at least a decade. Several other bills to spread out the costs of the winter storm and consider market reforms are also moving through the Legislature.

ERCOT’s independent market monitor recommended in March that energy sold during that period be repriced at a lower rate, which would have allowed ERCOT to claw back about $4.2 billion in payments to power generators, but the Public Utility Commission declined to do so, even as a court ruling on plant obligations in emergencies drew scrutiny among market participants.

Instead, lawmakers are pushing for bailouts that several energy experts have said is needed, both to ensure distressed companies don’t pass enormous costs on to their customers and to prevent electricity investors and companies from leaving the state if it’s viewed as too risky to continue doing business.

Becky Klein, an energy consultant in Austin and former chair of the Public Utility Commission who played a key role in de-regulating Texas’ electricity market two decades ago, said during a retail electricity panel hosted by Integrate that legislation is necessary to provide “some kind of backstop during a crazy market crisis like this to show the financial market that we’re willing to provide some relief.”

Still, some lawmakers are concerned with how they will win public support, including potential voter-approved funding measures, for bills to bail out the state’s electricity market.

“I have to go back to Laredo and say, ‘I know you didn’t have electricity for several days, but now I’m going to make you pay a little more for the next 20 years,’” state Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, said during an early April discussion on the plan in the House State Affairs Committee. He said he voted for the bill because it’s in the best interest of the state.

Paddie, during the same committee hearing, acknowledged that “none of us want to increase fees or taxes.” However, he said, “We have to deal with the reality set before us.”

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ISEM Price Volatility reflects Ireland-Northern Ireland grid balancing pressures, driven by dispatchable power shortages, day-ahead market dynamics, renewable shortfalls, and interconnector constraints, affecting intraday trading, operational reserves, and cross-border electricity flows.

Key Points

ISEM price volatility is Irish power price swings from grid balancing stress and limited dispatchable capacity.

✅ One-off spike linked to plant outage and low renewables

✅ Day-ahead market settling; intraday trading integration pending

✅ Interconnectors and reserves vital to manage adequacy

Irish grid-balancing prices soared to €3,774 ($4,284) per megawatt-hour last month amid growing concerns over dispatchable power capacity across Europe.

The price spike, triggered by an alert regarding generation losses, came only four months after Ireland and Northern Ireland launched an Integrated Single Electricity Market (ISEM) designed to make trading more competitive and improve power distribution across the island.

Evie Doherty, senior consultant for Ireland at Cornwall Insight, a U.K.-based energy consultancy, said significant price volatility was to be expected while ISEM is still settling down, aligning with broader 2019 grid edge trends seen across markets.

When the U.K. introduced a single market for Great Britain, called British Electricity Trading and Transmission Arrangements, in 2005, it took at least six months for volatility to subside, Doherty said.

In the case of ISEM, “it will take more time to ascertain the exact drivers behind the high prices,” she said. “We are being told that the day-ahead market is functioning as expected, but it will take time to really be able to draw conclusions on efficiency.”

Ireland and Northern Ireland have been operating with a single market “very successfully” since 2007, said Doherty. Although each jurisdiction has its own regulatory authority, they make joint decisions regarding the single market.

ISEM, launched in October 2018, was designed to help include Ireland and Northern Ireland day-ahead electricity prices in a market pricing system called the European Union Pan-European Hybrid Electricity Market Integration Algorithm.

In time, ISEM should also allow the Irish grids to participate in European intraday markets, and recent examples like Ukraine's grid connection underline the pace of integration efforts across Europe. At present, they are only able to do so with Great Britain. “The idea was to...integrate energy use and create more efficient flows between jurisdictions,” Doherty said.

EirGrid, the Irish transmission system operator, has reported that flows on its interconnector with Northern Ireland are more efficient than before, she said.

The price spike happened when the System Operator for Northern Ireland issued an alert for an unplanned plant outage at a time of low renewable output and constraints on the north-south tie-line with Ireland, according to a Cornwall Insight analysis.

Not an isolated event

Although it appears to have been a one-off event, there are increasing worries that a shortage of dispatchable power could lead to similar situations elsewhere across Europe, as seen in Nordic grid constraints recently.

Last month, newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported that German industrial concerns had been forced to curtail more than a gigawatt of power consumption to maintain operational reserves on the grid in December, after renewable production fell short of expectations and harsh weather impacts strained systems elsewhere.

Paul-Frederik Bach, a Danish energy consultant, has collected data showing that this was not an isolated incident. The FAZ report said German aluminum smelters had been forced to cut back on energy use 78 times in 2018, he noted.

Energy availability was also a concern last year in Belgium, where six out of seven nuclear reactors had been closed for maintenance. The closures forced Belgium to import 23 percent of its electricity from neighboring countries, Bach reported.

In a separate note, Bach revealed that 11 European countries that were net importers of energy had boosted their imports by 26 percent between 2017 and 2018. It is important to note that electricity imports do not necessarily imply a shortage of power, he stated.

However, it is also true that many European grid operators are girding themselves for a future in which dispatchable power is scarcer than today.

EirGrid, for example, expects dispatchable generation and interconnection capacity to drop from 10.6 gigawatts in 2018 to 9 gigawatts in 2027.

The Swedish transmission system operator Svenska Kraftnät, meanwhile, is forecasting winter peak power deficits could rise from 400 megawatts currently to 2.5 gigawatts in 2020-21.

Research conducted by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, suggests power adequacy will fall across most of Europe up to 2025, although perhaps not to a critical degree.

The continent’s ability to deal with the problem will be helped by having more efficient trading systems, Bach told GTM. That means developments such as ISEM could be a step in the right direction, despite initial price volatility.

In the long run, however, Europe will need to make sure market improvements are accompanied by investments in HVDC technology and interconnectors and reserve capacity. “Somewhere there must be a production of electricity, even when there is no wind,” said Bach. 

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