Fortnightly Magazine - March 2005

Frontlines

Can utility executives find happiness in back-to-basics?

Frontlines

Can utility executives find happiness in back-to-basics?

We've read the pitch a number of times in these very pages. Top investment bankers have told us that a "back-to-basics" strategy will never produce a high-enough return to please electric utility stockholders; that the only solution to bridge this "earnings gap" would involve a rash of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) between utilities.

People

<font color="red">New Opportunities:</font>

People

Power Measurements

An improved definition of heating and cooling degree-days for power markets.

Power Measurement

An improved definition of heating and cooling degree-days for power markets.

Anyone who owns an air conditioner and pays an electric bill knows that weather drives demand for electricity, but quantifying the relationship between weather and electricity demand isn't easy. Was last winter severely cold? Winters are always cold. If it really was cold, exactly how cold was it?

Perspective

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:

Perspective

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:

State involvement in promoting renewable technologies has profound implications for the future of the energy industry.

Election-year posturing seems to have prevented the federal government from reaching consensus on a number of energy issues ranging from standard market design to global warming, MBTE to Kyoto, ANWR to nuclear waste disposal.

Commission Watch

What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.

Commission Watch

What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.

While the electric utility industry has largely agreed on what elements to include in a standard market design (SMD) to govern wholesale power trading in a given region, recent experience shows that the regulators from time to time have overlooked a number of things.

Business & Money

Sticking to the Knitting:

Business & Money

Sticking to the Knitting:

A review of three years of post-Enron stock performance by electric utilities.

Immediately following the Enron collapse, investors dumped the stock of any electric power company that appeared to be pursuing non-traditional growth strategies. Any company that emphasized unregulated businesses-investments in overseas assets, merchant power plant development, and energy marketing and trading-was suspect.

Technology Corridor

Mobile workers provide the next opportunity for utility productivity gains.

Technology Corridor

Mobile workers provide the next opportunity for utility productivity gains.

Field workers at many electric, gas, and water utilities have not realized the benefits of their company's substantial investments in office-based information technology (IT) systems for work and asset management, customer service and billing, geographic information systems, mobile technologies, or even e-mail.

Energy Risk & Market

<font color="red">SPECIAL SERIES Part 3</font>

SPECIAL SERIES Part 3

Energy Risk & Markets

Default Retail Supply:

New Jersey's recent basic generation service auction shows how ignoring the many sources of risk can be financially ruinous.

Bidding at last year's basic generation service (BGS) auction in New Jersey was generally found to be extremely aggressive as many merchant energy providers watched in amazement as the bid prices continued to fall during the course of the auction.

The Global LNG Gamble

The Geopolitical Risks of LNG

The Geopolitical Risks of LNG

To many energy-industry analysts, 2005 is a make-or-break year for the U.S. gas market. If we don't have at least several liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in construction by the end of the year, the country arguably will face serious gas-supply shortages and price spikes beginning in about 2008.1

Distributed Generation: Who Benefits?

<font color="red">Distributed Generation</font>

Distributed Generation

In the first of three articles, experts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory examine the technical obstacles, deployment, and economic issues surrounding distributed generation.

The existing electric power delivery system is a critical part of this country's economic and societal infrastructure, and proposals to increase the role of distributed energy resources (DER) within this system are welcomed by few in the utility industry.

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