Public power is competitive power, and that keeps IOUs on their toes.

There they go again. You know who I mean, the critics who fear us in a competitive electric utility environment, or who oppose, for ideological reasons, government involvement in the power business.

Charles E. Bayless, in his article "Time's Up for Public Power" (Public Utilities Fortnightly, July 1, 1998), offered up just the latest of these below-the-belt blows.

It's tempting to respond in kind to these critics. Why? Because they torture the facts and distort the record.

DTE Energy Technologies named G. Paul Horst company president. Horst was founder and first chief executive officer of Nematron Corp. He pioneered the use of industrial computers to provide operator-to-machine interfaces similar to ATM machines. Since 1995, Horst has served as a director of Interface Systems and a consultant to DTE Energy.

Randy Hardy, former CEO and administrator of Bonneville Power Administration, has formed the Hardy Energy Consulting firm. Hardy will work with the Washington, D.C.

Shaky merger policy finds the FERC at war with itself.

"IN HIS DELIGHTFUL ARTICLE, "THE FOLKLORE OF Deregulation," published this summer in the Yale Journal on Regulation, federal judge Richard Cudahy notes the ethereal nature of "virtual electricity." This new product, he explains,"exists only as a blip on a computer screen and will never give one a shock." "Reality," he notes, has "retreated to the money part of the system."

We could use a dose of that reality in looking at electric utility mergers.

States earmark millions to fund solar projects via system benefits charges.

Making solar power a realistic choice for electric consumers is a burgeoning issue for state utility regulators. As part of electric restructuring, regulators are trying to finance the costs of solar installations.

Key to delivering commercial, on-grid solar power to new markets are state efforts, partnered with other government and industry actions. So far, the system benefits charge, or SBC, is the primary short-term incentive to develop solar, wind, biomass and other renewable resources.

With few regrets, a regulator steps down from the PUC, still touting his brand of electric competition.

I'm proud to have been an author of the first chapter of a book still being written.

Today's electric industry is more competitive, more reliable, more efficient, and more dynamic than it was six years ago when I joined the California Public Utilities Commission. However, the future of the industry has not been set. The steps taken over the next several years will determine the outcome of electric competition.

These executives are energizing the power business with their persistence, ideas and pure gut instincts.

What is an innovator? Must he, or she, be an inventor? Or merely an idea-prone CEO with a knack for building a string of successful companies? Or could an innovator be both a scientist and CEO?

In this first-ever feature, Fortnightly has chosen innovators from all segments of the energy business.

How to survive in a seller's market.

Divesting power plants today may look very much like a seller's market. Buyers may believe they lack the necessary leverage to take an aggressive position on workforce transition.

Report answers the sticky question: Where'd it go?

Subsidies. It's a word that prompts finger pointing from all directions in the energy industry. Now a new study, Federal Incentives for the Energy Industries, has uncovered which sources of energy (em not which type of provider (em received the most federal dollars over the past 50 years.

But don't expect the finger pointing to stop.

Management Information Services Inc., a Washington, D.C. economic and research consulting firm, found that federal subsidies over the past five decades totaled $564 billion in 1997 dollars.

Hurdles loom in 10 states eyeing deregulation.

Lawsuits and delayed deadlines. A "go slow" approach and more studies. Stranded cost debates and commission reports that make recommendations but avoid concrete action.

With a new wave of states addressing electric competition, these are a few of the themes that have emerged in 1998. In most states, the process has been slow, though the start of competition does, in fact, appear closer in many.