Fortnightly Magazine - September 1 1998

Did you hear the one about the utility dispatcher who downed one too many and paid too much for power? He said his system was loaded.

But his customers weren't. To learn more, I refer you to Kati Sasseville, the recently, though only somewhat, retired general counsel of Otter Tail Power Co., who believes that she and other colleagues at her former company have discovered something that everyone else has overlooked. The story begins in 1924, when Allegheny Power and Philadelphia Electric became the first utilities in the country to interconnnect their lines.

FERC

MIDWEST POWER PRICES. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman James Hoecker announced July 15 that as soon as the staff presents its findings, the FERC will deal with the complaints filed by Cinergy, Steel Dynamics Inc., and others asking for regulatory relief from the late June run-up in Midwest bulk power prices (as high as $7,500 per megawatt-hour), and for a price cap set at $100/MWh. Nevertheless, Hoecker advised that the FERC was in "no hurry," and that the remedies available to it were not entirely clear. Docket No. EL98-53 (Cinergy), filed June 29, 1998; Docket No.

ELECTRIC UTILITIES THE WORLD OVER ARE BEGINNING to draw upon the power of Internet. But U.S. investor-owned utilities clearly are the most receptive to using the technology for a variety of applications when compared with their smaller domestic or international peers.

According to a Newton-Evans Research Co. poll of 79 sites around the world, more than half of all information systems officials at utilities planned to use or are using the Internet for customer communications. About 100 percent of U.S.