Letters to the Editor
Mark B. Lively is a utility economic engineer.
Robert Blohm’s article, “Solving the Crisis in Unscheduled Power,” (August 2004, p. 62) ignores a significant part of the power-scheduling paradigm — that is, it ignores transmission. Every power schedule not only includes load and generation but also a path to move the electricity between those points.
The Blohm solution would have paid American Electric Power to provide frequency response for the utilities in Florida during the August hurricanes without any payment going to the Tennessee Valley Authority or Southern Co., across whose transmission lines the power necessarily flowed. All parties should be paid, as is consistent with the findings of the Joint Inadvertent Interchange Taskforce (JIITF) that inadvertent interchange has a transmission-related value.