Are developers building more power generation capacity than U.S. markets can bear?
NEWGen, a new database from RDI Consulting, reveals that U.S. developers and utilities propose 180,000 megawatts of new capacity nationwide. Of this amount, 10,000 MW is in operation. An additional 11,000 MW has been postponed indefinitely or canceled. That leaves 159,000 MW of competing projects in a market that most likely can absorb only 15,000 to 17,000 MW of additions per year.
Carmen Ana Cintron was named an administrative law judge at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Cintron previously served as Hearing Office chief administrative law judge in the Office of Hearings and Appeals of the Social Security Administration in Chamblee, Ga.
Unicom Corp. appointed Elizabeth Anne "Betsy" Moler senior vice president for federal government affairs. Moler, an attorney in private practice in Washington, D.C., is a former FERC chair. Upon completion of Unicom's merger with PECO Energy, she will head the combined company's Washington office.
Nevada Gov.
Having now passed a rule that takes very few chances, the FERC must decide what's in store for investors.
Whatever happened to the Sunshine Act - the law that tells government officials to hold their meetings in the open?
That's what all of us in the trade press wanted to know on Dec. 15, when Chairman James Hoecker kept us waiting all morning and well into the afternoon, while he and his cohorts at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission debated in secret on the ninth floor over the future of the electric utility industry.
Deregulation in the E.U. is racing ahead, posing a challenge for U.S. firms. Yet the outcome is uncertain, as EdF, the giant of Europe, has yet to show its hand.
Eighty percent of the European power market will be open to retail competition, or liberalized, by 2003. The fundamental framework for shifting to a competitive market in Europe has some striking differences to the transition in the United States. Some primary contrasts with the U.S.
Britain's top energy suppliers compete on price but offer their own unique benefits and incentives.
In addition to the effects of regulatory reform and policy, certain consumer, environmental and technological shifts in the United Kingdom are effecting significant changes in the manner in which electric and gas companies competing for customers in the mass market. The U.K. residential market was opened to electric retail competition between September 1998 to May 1999. As of September 1999, about 10 percent of all U.K. residential customers had changed electricity suppliers.
Once trailing, but now the frontrunner, Germany attempts to remake its fragmented energy markets - with no new federal bureaucracy.
Here's a timely recommendation for U.S. electric power executives: Maybe it's time to brush up on those long-forgotten high school German lessons. Suddenly, the German electric power market has become the fastest changing in the world. It all happened in less than the two years passed since Germany enacted a new energy law, which became fully effective on April 28, 1998.
A shakeout looms for retailers, and familiarity may be an edge.
Industry consolidation may whittle the number of electric and gas suppliers in the United Kingdom to just a handful by 2005, if the expectations of U.K. utilities are correct. Further, many predict that these mega-suppliers will include non-traditional competitors with trusted names - maybe even supermarkets or banks.
Nearly three-quarters of the respondents in a survey of 95 U.K. utilities say they expect just five or seven major power suppliers to emerge during the next five years.
Utilities and marketers hash out the final details on a standardized contract for physical trades of electricity.
A standardized master contract for U.S. power trading could help wring order out of chaos in electric commodities markets by defining a common set of terms for physical transactions for both utilities and marketers, say experts.
But success likely will hinge on how well utilities and marketers can compromise on a narrow list of issues still to be settled, say those same experts.
State PUCs
Gas Retail Rate Design. In a move toward equalizing rates of return between customer classes, the Oregon PUC authorized Northwest Natural Gas Co. to increase base rates by nearly $246,000, at the same time boosting residential rates by 1.3 percent but lowering rates for large commercial and industrial users. It set return on equity at 10.25 percent, finding the rate "consistent with the downward trend of ROEs authorized by other regulatory commissions." Order No. 99-697, Nov. 12, 1999 (Ore.P.U.C.).
Electric Restructuring.
The Electric Power Supply Association elected B. Kent Burton, senior vice president of policy and international government relations for Ogden Energy Group, its chair for 2000. Kenneth E. Randolph, senior vice president and general counsel for Dynegy Inc., was named EPSA's first vice chair, and Bill Mack, president and chief executive officer of Coastal Power Co., was named second vice chair.
EPSA also named Donn Salvosa manager of government affairs and Shannon Gordon manager of finance and administration.