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Time After Time

Regulators are starting to show signs of strain over the restructuring debate.

Up to now, many in the industry thought everybody but the regulators had tired of the constant back-and-forth over regional market issues such as standard market design. This is not to say that state regulators have been able to find any common resolution.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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Prevention Prescriptions

Reliability demands will drive automation investments.

In the days and weeks following Aug. 14, 2003, politicians scrambled to assess blame for the blackouts that plagued the United States and Canada. Even today, as the blame game pro­ceeds, the precise cause of the grid’s collapse remains uncertain. But Republicans, Democrats, and the utility industry alike seem to agree on one thing: the U.S. power grid needs major investment.
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

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The Near-Term Fix

How to mitigate transmission risk before the next big blackout.

New legislation and bigger power lines won’t solve the immediate problem for the grid: the threat of failure. Energy providers must begin thinking of reliability in terms of days rather than years, and they must roll out programs and enhance technology now to protect assets, as well as customers.
Byline: 

Ralph G. Loretta & James E. Anderson

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The Myth of the Transmission Deficit

The grid does not need a Marshall Plan for new investment.

Do we really need to invest $50 billion to $100 billion in the U.S. transmission system? The industry says yes, but the evidence says otherwise.
Byline: 

Steve Huntoon & Alexandra Metzner

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Energy Tech's Quantum Leap

Tomorrow's utility technology may be revolutionized at the molecular level.

Carbon could revolutionize the electricity industry, thanks to developments in nanotechnology. The Fortnightly looks at how the technology will expand industry possibilities through cables, photovoltaics, and fuel cells.
Byline: 

Jennifer Alvey & Michael T. Burr

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The Modern Utility: Still a Black Box?

Wall Street bankers say utilities are not effectively telling their story.

How do you value an investor-owned utility? Ever since the Enron debacle, the credit crisis and the economic downturn, many in the investment community say that there exists a need for utilities to better communicate their business vision and corporate model — particularly now that the economy is headed into an economic upswing and utilities will have to compete with higher-yielding financial instruments such as U.S. treasuries, or competing equities with higher-paying dividends.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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MISO-PJM Super Region: FERC Makes Companies Pay for RTO Choices

Irregular seams affect ratemaking policies.

In a case that marks the first time FERC eliminated inter-RTO rate pancaking, the commission in late July issued an order terminating regional through-and-out rates (RTORs) charged by two regional transmission owners. The decision removes an estimated $250 million in yearly fees collected by those two entities. But the lost revenue has parties to the proceeding squabbling over many aspects of the case.
Byline: 

Lori A. Burkhart

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Of Blackouts and Belief

Hopes and dreams sag and fail, like an overheated power line.

New policies never come without risk. But energy policy always seems at risk of becoming entranced with the prospects of a single controlling idea.
Byline: 

Richard D. Cudahy

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Combined-Cycle Profitability as a Market Barometer

A hypothetical look at moneymakers across regions.

Given the high degree of ongoing electric market uncertainty, it can be challenging to get a reading on the current and future health of power markets. One way to gauge the health of the generation segment of the electric sector is to simulate the financial performance of a new gas-fired, combined-cycle unit. To perform this analysis, we start with the cost and performance characteristics of a new combined-cycle unit.
Byline: 

Brandon Owens

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People

People for November 1, 2003

New opportunities at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Analysis Group, Southwest Gas Corp., and others.
Byline: 

PUF

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