In 1995, the pitched battle that played out between Peco and PPL became the functional equivalent of an advertising blitz in support of electricity restructuring, and planted the seeds for Enron to get involved in utility regulation.

It’s a new era for utilities and their consumers. Today’s leaders are atop those economic, political and technological happenings.

While the underlying questions in each state regarding net energy metering are much the same, the two PUC's will approach the issue from different perspectives.

Cost-conscious commercial and industrial customers may be oblivious to the legal issues surrounding their energy choices, but their demand response providers are not. The U.S. Supreme Court will now decide whether those services will be regulated by the federal government or state utility commissions.

Employee engagement can become a company strength that supports utilities through challenging times. Consider employee engagement a strategic investment in coping with disruptive change.

Andrew L. Ott will be PJM Interconnection’s president and CEO later this year; American Transmission Co. named Mike Rowe the company’s future president and CEO; DTE Energy named Paula Silver as v.p. for corporate communications; Georgia Power named Craig Barrs executive v.p. of the company’s customer service and operations organization; ITC Holdings promoted Christine Mason Soneral to senior v.p.; E.ON Energy Services named Keith Day president; Gil C. Quini­ones was elected chair of EPRI; Jane Palmieri was elected industry co-chair at the Alliance to Save Energy; Rich Meyer was named president of the nation’s Energy Bar Association; and others.

Rooftop solar is a bell weather technology. And now the goal is to integrate and other distributed resources into grid planning, operations and policy.

Tesla’s Elon Musk is driving the electric car off the lot and onto the premises of America’s electric utilities, proposing to build and sell energy storage batteries on both a residential and grid-wide scale – ideas that the chief executive will fully flesh out at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in New Orleans this June.