Generating capacity adequate next year
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid that serves about 80 percent of the state, issued the new estimates in an update to its May forecast. That report had anticipated the state's reserve - the surplus of generating capacity over expected consumption - to barely meet the desired 12.5 percent margin in 2008 and to slip well below it in the subsequent years.
ERCOT said the state should have 72,416 megawatts of generating capacity in 2008, compared with 64,010 megawatts in demand, for a reserve of 13.1 percent. That's expected to dip to 12.1 percent in 2009 as demand growth is expected to outstrip the addition of nearly 1,400 megawatts of new capacity that year.
The gains for 2009 and 2010 are principally from three new coal-fired units under construction by Luminant, formerly TXU, which were awaiting air permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in May and were not counted by ERCOT.
Those plan s were granted their permits and will add 2,291 megawatts of capacity in 2009 and 2010, ERCOT said. ERCOT also said 893 megawatts of new capacity are planned in 2008 but don't qualify to be counted in its current outlook. Additionally, more than 4,400 megawatts of generating capacity from mothballed plants could be used.
Related News

A goodwill gesture over electricity sows discord in Lebanon
BEIRUT - It was supposed to be a goodwill gesture from an energy company in Turkey.
This summer, the Karadeniz Energy Group lent Lebanon a floating power station to generate electricity at below-market rates to help ease the strain on the country's woefully undermaintained power sector.
Instead, the barge's arrival opened a Pandora's box of partisan mudslinging in a country hobbled by political sectarianism and dysfunction.
There have been rows over where it should dock, how to allocate its 235 megawatts of power, and even what to call the barge.
It has even driven a wedge between Lebanon's two dominant parties among Shiite Muslims:…