Become a PUF Member Organization

Fortnightly Magazine - September 2004

Technology Corridor

Energy Storage Systems

Technology Corridor

Energy Storage Systems

How to reduce the cycling costs of conventional generation.

Energy Storage Systems (ESS) can provide significant benefits associated with reduced damage to fossil-fuel power plants if the ESS is used in such as way that it reduces start-ups or load-following/cycling. Though those benefits may not be well known, understood, or documented, they are real and ascertainable.

Byline: 
G. Paul Grimsrud, Steven A. Lefton, and Philip M. Besuner
Read Entire Article

Gas Supply: Too little, Too late?

GAS SUPPLY

GAS SUPPLY

Pipeline and LNG terminal developments may arrive too late to prevent a natural gas disaster.

For exactly two months, MidAmerican Energy sponsored a $6.3 billion project to bring stranded natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to an adjoining pipeline in Canada. But when Alaska's Department of Revenue rejected MidAmerican's proposal for an exclusive partnership to develop the pipeline, the company pulled out.

Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

Read Entire Article

A Gas Crisis, or Not?

The conclusions made by the NPC gas study raise more questions than they answer.

The conclusions made by the NPC gas study raise more questions than they answer.

In late September of 2003, the National Petroleum Council (NPC) issued a comprehensive study on the future of the U.S. natural gas industry.1

Byline: 
Ken Costello
Read Entire Article

Special ECM Section

Deregulation, competition, and the back-to-basics utility strategy have created tremendous pressures for utilities to cut operating costs while improving customer service. In this environment, companies are being challenged to build the utility of the future-a lean provider of power generation, transmission, and distribution run tightly and efficiently, creating a low-cost, high-performance business.

Byline: 
see
Read Entire Article

Business Process Outsourcing: Myth or Reality?

ECM

ECM

Business Process Outsourcing

The utility HR department is the new battleground.

Today information technology (IT) outsourcing contracts are being signed on an almost weekly basis and are rapidly extending into business process outsourcing (BPO) deals covering a whole range of areas-customer care, human resources (HR), finance and accounting, and procurement, to name a few.

Byline: 
Dan Sullivan and Diane Shelgren
Read Entire Article
V