Become a PUF Member Organization

Fortnightly Magazine - January 2005

Merchant Power: Ratepayers Back At Risk

A review of power plant deals in 2004 shows that utilities are buying.

Whether evolution or devolution, the merchant deals done to date show movement to a familiar structure; ratepayers are back at risk. While ratepayers have benefitted from merchant plants, they also paid since competition began with PURPA in 1978, and many of the acquisitions put them at risk for future changes in power values and fuel costs.
Byline: 

Jeff Bodington

Read Entire Article

Betting on Broadband

Are consumer broadband over powerline (BPL) services enough to make the business case for utilities?

After years of development, technology to deliver high-speed data over the existing electric power delivery network has emerged in the marketplace. In some sections of Cincinnati and Manassas, Va., consumers now have an alternative to DSL and cable for broadband Internet access. It's real and it works.
Byline: 

Karen George

Read Entire Article

Risk Appetites: How Hungry Are Utility Investors?

An effective risk-management strategy depends on knowing your shareholder’s idea of value.

How do shareholder relations link to risk-management policy? The answer: Utilities have to communicate to shareholders a particular set of operating strategies that will attain certain financial results. Risky activities both enhance and threaten those financial results. Therefore, policies must define how risky strategies are formulated, approved, controlled, and measured.
Byline: 

David C. Shimko

Read Entire Article

IT Roundtable: The Digitized Grid

Data gathering and controllability offer the quickest path to reliability.

Technology leaders at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative present their visions of energy IT in the 21st century.
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

Read Entire Article

Reversing the Gas Crisis: The Methane Hydrate Solution

Commercialization of methane recovery from coastal deposits of methane hydrates could head off an impending gas shortage.

More than half of the Earth’s organic carbon is in the form of methane hydrates—also known as the ice that burns. U.S. potential is at least 100,000 Tcf., but commercial production has not been achieved.
Byline: 

Henry R. Linden

Read Entire Article

Coal Gasification Gets Real

The technology works, but public policy will dictate its future.

The future of integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) power plants depends on public support, but environmental and market factors are helping IGCC look like a winning technology for the future.
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

Read Entire Article

A Better Merchant Mousetrap?

The failure of the Empire Connection spells trouble for private transmission projects.

It’s at the very heart of all policy initiatives for both electric generation and transmission: How do you attract the right amount of investment without creating an overbuilt market, or a boom-bust scenario? In recent months, utility executives, financiers, and policy-makers have been asking this question with even greater zeal than usual.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

Read Entire Article

People (January 2005)

AGL Resources announced the reorganization of its six-state territory into two divisions. Briggs L. Tobin was named GE's senior counsel for transactions. The Board of Directors of CH Energy Group Inc. appointed Joseph J. DeVirgilio Jr. to the position of executive vice president of corporate services and administration. And others ...
Read Entire Article

Merchant-Energy Bottom Fishers

Private equity rolls the dice.

One way some new players in the power generation market are looking at the valuation is to separate out “extrinsic” value and apply a higher discount rate or “haircut.” An alternative approach is to price the “whole curve” on a risk-adjusted basis.
Byline: 

Gary L. Hunt and Grant Thain

Read Entire Article
V