Frontlines

The Brink of Ruin?

 

 

Benchmarks

"Both the environment and consumers will benefit in the end if retail electricity prices are allowed to "rise and fall according to market conditions."

Off Peak

October 15, 2001

Runway Reliability

 

Electricity demands enter security mix at nation's airports.

Natural Gas Hedging: A Primer for Utilities and Regulators

 

What commissions need to learn.
What LDCs should already know.

The facts are now in. If utilities had hedged their natural gas purchases during the 1990s, they could have earned windfalls for those they serve, given the wild price gyrations of the past decade (). Yet few if any households or businesses saw any windfall, because few utilities were engaged in futures and other derivatives markets.

Gas Price Prudence: From Hedge-and-Hope to Best Practice

Utilities and regulators should follow the same ideas that govern risk management at the largest of commodity trading houses.

The July 5, 2001 issue of offered an update on what utilities and regulators are doing in the area of commodity price hedging for natural gas.

The headline read, "Dominion East Ohio Sales Customers Will Pay 29% Less in Gas Costs under PUCO-Led Encouragement of Hedging Plan...."

The Risk that Wasn't Hedged: So What's Your Gamma Position?

 

Power markets often show coincident peaks in price and volume.
That can make profit unusually volatile.

Force equals mass times acceleration (F=ma). Any student of physics should know this equation. In other words, force doesn't just increase with added mass; rather, it accelerates in its strength.

Frontlines

Ripple Effects