The data is in. Market power fails as an explanatory variable for episodes of high prices.

The past summer represented a key turning point in our understanding of deregulated wholesale power markets. Until then, it was possible to find major North American markets that lacked any experience with severe price spikes. Now that immunity is denied. Price spikes in California and other Western markets mean that the last regions bucking the trend have fallen in line.

 

e-Commerce is consolidating, but there's room for the little guys too.

Thomas Edison built the electric utility industry virtually from scratch out of his workshop, so can Internet mavericks do the same for e-commerce? Or has the moment passed for the garage startups, leaving it to the big utilities—or better yet, the large conglomerates and multi-company joint ventures—to attract capital and introduce the new ideas?

Neither this Agreement, nor any rights hereunder, may be assigned by operation of law or otherwise, in whole in part, by Client without the prior, written permission of [the software provider]. Any sale of more than fifty percent (50 percent) of the common voting stock of, or other right to control, Client shall be deemed an assignment. Any purported assignment without such permission shall be void.

Off Peak

October 15, 2000

Life in the Aughts

Experts predict top 10 energy innovations for 2010.

Before we've even agreed on a name for the coming decade, energy experts are predicting life-altering changes by 2010.

News Digest

 

State PUCs

Restructuring Plans. The Ohio PUC denied rehearing of its restructuring order for FirstEnergy issued two months earlier, rejecting arguments by all petitioners-utility, marketers, and consumer watchdog groups.

Frontlines

Engineers Have Their Day

 

1 Ilic, Zaborszky, "Dynamics and Control of Large Electric Power Systems," John Wiley & Sons, 2000 (800 page text).

2 Ilic, Arce, Yoon, Fumagali, "Assessing Reliability Under Open Access," to be published in The Electricity Journal, December 2000.

3 For more information, please contact the author and/or the MIT Technology Licensing Office, making reference to MIT Case # 9062.