The View from Here
What an editor learns about human nature.
For me, editing has always been about sharing the joy of learning with others.
Fortnightly Magazine - February 2015
People (February 2015)
Xcel Energy named Christopher Clark president of Northern States Power Co. Minnesota; Bill Way became president of Southwestern Energy; FirstEnergy elected Anthony J. Alexander executive chairman; The U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Colette Honorable to join FERC; Virginia Lodge and Ronald Walter became members of the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors; Changes at Mississippi Power; AES Corp., and CMS Energy. And others...
Transactions (February 2015)
ONEOK Partners completed its acquisition of assets from Chevron affiliates for about $800 million; Dominion Resources agreed to purchase Carolina Gas Transmission from SCANA Corp. for about $492.9 million; Entergy subsidiaries acquired the Union Power Station for $948 million; ALLETE Clean Energy acquired a 108-MW wind generation facility; Duke Energy Renewables acquired the Halifax Solar Power Project from Geenex and ET Solar Energy; Pattern Energy Group acquired the 200-MW Logan’s Gap Wind project in Texas for about $113 million; An affiliate of Starwood Energy Group Global agreed to acquire a 369-MW portfolio of three natural gas facilities from Lakeside Energy; NextEra Energy and Hawaiian Electric Industries agreed to combine.
Our Nuclear Lifeline
Learning from the tragedy of Vermont Yankee.
Learning from the tragedy of Vermont Yankee. Can merchant nuclear operators compete in the market place with cheap natural gas and subsidized renewables?
New York's Natural Gas Path
The state is diverging from the national trend.
New York is taking its own path and outlawing the use of high-volume natural gas fracking. Yet, the state will remain a voracious consumer of natural gas that is fracked elsewhere. What gives?
Microgrids: Friend or Foe for Utilities?
For many, it’s the next logical step for smart grid technology.
A small, but growing, number of utilities are embracing these technologies. Microgrids offer a networking platform that the utility can both aggregate and optimize.
Nuclear's New Chance
Reprocessing nuclear fuel is a sustainable and viable option.
Reprocessing nuclear fuel separates the uranium and the plutonium for the rest of the spent fuel, enabling plant operators to reuse the uranium. But concerns over nuclear proliferation are stopping it in this country.
Playing Safe with Capacity Markets
PJM would minimize risk, but so did regulation.
Changes envisioned by PJM call for ever more structured markets, further reducing the scope of the competitive landscape from which RTOs arose. They may produce a system that is actually more costly and less innovative than regulation.
PJM's Three-Way Proposal
A re-defined capacity product, revised parameters for generator performance, and a new role for demand response.
The proposal creates a new capacity product called the “Capacity Performance Resource.”
Early Clean Power Planning
A hedging strategy for sec. 111(d).
While the public comment period on EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed rule has closed, there are still opportunities to engage in the federal policymaking process before the summer 2015 release of the final rule.