A New Solid South
Where Entergy leads, will Wal-Mart follow?
Everyone is talking about Entergy's move to form a single-company RTO-lite across its service territory in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Spot-Market Clearing
Solving the electricity credit malaise.
A monthly billing cycle results in exposures of up to 60 days’ settlement. Participant default is likely, and the potential loss from such an event is significant. Spot-market clearing can solve these problems.
The EPA Speaks Out: The Clean Air Interstate Rule Explained
The Environmental Protection Agency reviews how the multi-pollutant control concept is to work.
Currently, 132 areas do not meet the new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particles or ozone, affecting some 160 million people, or 57 percent of the U.S. population. What efforts are under way by the EPA to bring these areas into compliance?
Fulfilling the Value Proposition
The Next M&A Wave: If mergers are once again a potential strategy for accomplishing growth objectives, the previous round of transactions offer several lessons.
The industry stands at an inflection point regarding consolidation. But this time, it is less likely to retreat from more and larger combinations. What’s driving renewed interest in mergers and acquisitions?
Distributed Generation: Hastening Genco Obsolescence?
DER: This final installment of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's series on distributed energy resources investigates efficiency, the environment, and generation displacement.
Do distributed energy resources result in more pollution, or less? Our final installment of the series from Oak Ridge National Laboratory answers the question.
Windpower: Beyond Boom and Bust
Windpower is caught in a vicious cycle of Washington politics. Escaping the cycle will require visionary leadership in Congress and the utility industry.
With the Production Tax Credit subject to the whims of a fickle Congress, U.S. windpower remains in an ongoing state of uncertainty. Will the United States embrace the technology?
Default Retail Supply: Making the Call on Market Price and Model Risk
How to set reserve levels for full requirements auctions.
Series Part 4: Retail supply auctions, known as Basic Generation Service auctions, are being proposed around the country. In a second article on BGS auctions, Andy Dunn presents a different view of load servicing valuations.
The Widening Technological Divide
Increased business and regulatory challenges have utilities lagging in investments to meet energy demand a decade from now.
The electricity enterprise has tended through restructuring to become a victim of its historic success in maintaining universal service reliability at ever-lower cost. The essential foundation for restoring enterprise vitality in the coming decade is rebuilding this fundamental public/private partnership, based on technology innovations that can increase the value of electricity service, including providing higher levels of reliability and security.
Giving Credit Where It’s Due
Utilities will gain from new regs for research tax credits.
The 1990s ushered in the era of deregulation, bringing a reluctance of state commissions to approve large capital expenditures for transmission and distribution (T&D). To make up for this, capital spending has increased dramatically in the last few years. Now the federal government is stepping in to help utilities prime the pump. The final regulations, issued in early 2004 by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, should make it a little easier for utilities, as well as other taxpayers, to use research and development (R&D) expenditures to help lower their effective tax rates.
Gas Transport Rates: A Puzzling Prospect
Why does FERC want to limit pipeline discounts?
It's certainly puzzling, if not downright peculiar. That's the feeling one gets after studying the notice of inquiry (NOI) that FERC launched late last year, after nearly 10 years of dragging its feet, to re-examine the wisdom of encouraging the practice of rate discounting by interstate natural gas pipelines.