Opening the Black Box
A new approach to utility asset management.
Creating a dynamic statistical approach to designing an overall strategy for utility asset management.
Strategy & Planning
Power Breakfast
Fortnightly’s Executive Roundtable considers industry options and risks.
Fortnightly recently convened a group of senior operations executives from a variety of companies to discuss current trends in the U.S. power industry. Their comments reflect a mixed outlook on the industry’s transitionary changes.
Dealing With the Duck
Designing markets to accommodate variable resources.
Growth in variable resources creates an increasing need for demand response and fast-ramping generation. The right market design can bring both.
Embracing Disruption
Developing a leadership role for utilities in alternative technologies.
Faced with aging assets, rising operating costs, growing regulatory risks, and flat demand growth, utilities are challenged to remain competitive in an evolving energy market. The answer might be for utilities to establish a leadership position and pursue a more flexible mission.
Smart Transition
Embracing a competitive and digital future for utilities.
A recent Accenture survey shows utility executives believe smart grid capabilities will transform the industry and bring competitive opportunities.
Turning Toward Customers
Utility transformation guided by improved customer insight.
Improved customer insight can help utilities transform their business models, to strengthen engagement with consumers and remain competitive as the energy sector evolves.
All You Need to Know
Picturing utilities in a series of sobering snapshots.
Utilities are growing rate base despite static or declining demand: making customers pay more for a product they want less of.
What Solar Success Looks Like
Managing the transition to a solar-powered future.
Solar energy has a bright future as part of America’s electric power industry. An orderly and beneficial transition will depend on strategic action.
Productivity Plateau
A mature industry faces a worrying round of hype.
Are we languishing, or working off a 20th-century legacy? Gartner’s hype cycle suggests the latter, as new technologies start producing value.
A Trip to RIIO in Your Future?
Great Britain’s latest innovation in grid regulation.
Great Britain’s electric regulator takes performance-based regulation to a new, more complex level, weighing policy choices against attendant costs.