Six weeks ago I wrote a column ("$70,000 an Hour," July 15, 1996, p. 4) about nuclear waste, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the billions of dollars paid in by electric utilities that lie stranded in the federal nuclear waste fund.

On July 23 a federal appeals court ruled that DOE must establish a repository and begin accepting high-level nuclear waste for storage, beginning January 31, 1998. (See, Indiana-Michigan Power Co. v. DOE, D.C. Cir.

Two Companies,

Two StrategiesThe question is whether to own or lease,

but each route offers its own advantages.

With deregulation nipping at their heels, utilities are looking for ways to gain and maintain

customers. Aggressive utilities are seeking new customers outside of their service territories and offering competitive prices, new products, and new services.

What to Do With All that CASH?Seeing no need to build, utility managers are looking

to invest. Can they be trusted

with stockholder money?With little of the fanfare that surrounds the debate on utility competition, robust cash flows and declining capital outlays have created forces that will reshape the industry no matter how competitive restructuring unfolds. Cash generation already exceeds investment in core utility activities, and the differential will grow sharply over the next several years.

in energy service companies to boost earnings beyond the normal growth rate?Going on the "defensive-offensive."

In the early 1990s, flush with utility money from its corporate parent, Entergy Systems and Service, Inc. began expanding to provide competitive energy services.

Labor got on well with monopoly.

But now, if experience is any guide,

expect a stiff fight for benefits, jobs, and wages.

At this very moment, utility chief executive officers (CEOs) are planning for the future.

An advance peek at the Edison Electric Institute's 1995 Statistical Yearbook of the Electric Utility Industry reveals a general trend toward increase over last year's figures (see Table 1).

s Installed capacity totaled 749,723 megawatts (Mw), up 0.5 percent. Investor-owned utility (IOU) capacity alone rose 0.4 percent. And the South Atlantic division showed the largest increase: 1.6 percent.

s Generation totaled 2,994,529 gigawatt-hours (Gwh), up 2.9 percent. IOUs contributed 2,340,482 Gwh to this total, increasing its output 1.4 percent.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission has authorized Intermountain Gas Co., a local distribution company (LDC), to implement a new interruptible-distribution transportation service for large-volume industrial customers, including a charge designed to minimize stranded costs associated with migration of customers from sales tariffs.

The Michigan Public Service Commission (PSC) has authorized Ameritech Michigan, a local exchange carrier (LEC), to restructure its rates to comply with a new state law forbidding LECs to charge less than the total-service, long-run incremental cost for each local exchange service offered. The LEC claimed that it began with basic services because prices for that segment of the market had been set artificially low for customers in rural areas of the state.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected claims that Washington Energy Co., corporate parent of Washington Gas Co., a local distribution company (LDC), committed securities fraud by failing to fully explain that its current application for a rate increase was based in part on expense requests and accounting methods rejected by state regulators in the past.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) has made preliminary assignments of unfranchised gas-service areas to local distribution companies (LDCs), pursuant to a 1995 state law. An earlier NCUC order sought applications from LDCs (see, Re Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity for Natural Gas Service, 164 PUR4th 591 (N.C.U.C. 1995)).