Fortnightly: A New Frontier

Presenting a new look and new editorial content for 2003.

In this Jan. 1, 2003, issue, Public Utilities Fortnightly magazine takes pause in this column from its energy industry commentary to tell readers about several important developments at the magazine.

Cross-Sound Cable Co. shows how transmission siting is much harder to do now than in the good old days.

Opposition to electric transmission line projects designed to upgrade the nation's infrastructure can come from a number of sources: the host municipality, adjacent municipalities, the state's executive branch, the legislative branch, commercial entities, ad hoc or long-standing environmental groups, and/or organized citizen groups.

Presenting a fair and simple distributed generation plan for utilities and policy-makers.

Distributed generation (DG) continues to face many institutional barriers erected before the technology emerged as an economic alternative. Chief among these barriers are existing rate and regulatory regimes, which fail to offer appropriate incentives to utilities and customers who might otherwise substitute DG facilities for distribution and generation.

Chasing after windmills and photovoltaics could well be the stuff of fiction.

Wind and solar cells (photovoltaics or PVs) are two renewable energy technologies that many hope will eventually provide the United States with massive amounts of clean, sustainable electric power for the indefinite future. Indeed, it is often suggested or implied that the United States can look to a future where most, if not all electric power can be provided by wind and photovoltaics [1, 2].

Regulatory and market forces put the pressure on information technology to perform.

Technology isn't in the driver's seat at some energy companies, but it's not as if those companies have reverted to using typewriters, carbons and rotary dial phones. In fact, it's beyond dispute that information technology (IT), in particular, can improve business performance-and nothing is more important to energy companies right now. But with slashed budgets and collapsing credit ratings, how should energy companies spend their precious IT dollars?

Asset Optimization Explained

To the editor: In the Oct. 1, 2002 issue ("The Fourth Wave," Frontlines, p. 4), executive editor Richard Stavros discusses how the term "asset optimization" has been used ambiguously to describe a tactical means of extracting more value from generating assets.

The sound and fury over trading scandals, credit defaults, and market manipulation so far has drowned out much of the mind-numbing debate over a standard market design (SMD), and rightly so. Utilities understand (as does the press) that Enron, "Deathstar," and "Get Shorty" will always sell more newspapers than locational pricing or congestion management.