People
(August 2005) President Bush nominated Joseph Kelliher to chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Xcel Energy named Richard C. (Dick) Kelly CEO. And others...
AES
Business & Money
Sticking to the Knitting:
Business & Money
Sticking to the Knitting:
A review of three years of post-Enron stock performance by electric utilities.
Immediately following the Enron collapse, investors dumped the stock of any electric power company that appeared to be pursuing non-traditional growth strategies. Any company that emphasized unregulated businesses-investments in overseas assets, merchant power plant development, and energy marketing and trading-was suspect.
Comments on 'Solving the Crisis in Unscheduled Power'
Letters to the Editor
Robert Blohm's article, "Solving the Crisis in Unscheduled Power," ignores a significant part of the power-scheduling paradigm — that is, it ignores transmission. Every power schedule not only includes load and generation but also a path to move the electricity between those points.
Winners and Losers: Utility Strategy and Shareholder Return
Diversified companies lead (and the globals lag) over the past five years.
The unbundling of services and companies in the electricity and natural gas industries have created unprecedented opportunities to reinvent the traditional integrated utility model, with a broader array of attendant risks and rewards. But this past year was clearly one of retrenchment and strategic soul searching, allowing an opportunity to re-examine the sector for winning business formulas.
Solving The Crisis In Unscheduled Power
While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.
How should power flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities be priced? The author proposes a formula.
People
People for May 2004.
Positions filled at Southern Co., World Association of Nuclear Operators, Allegheny Energy, and others.
Back to the Ratebase
Utilities are absorbing distressed IPPs, and raising alarm bells in the process.
In 2003, just over 1.4 GW of unregulated generating capacity was converted into rate-based assets. At least another 5.6 GW will be converted soon. What supply procurement practices are appropriate in today’s power market?
Payable on Demand
Utilities are finding strategic benefits in demand-based metering technologies.
New metering dramatically expands utilities’ data-handling requirements. Stepping up internal facilities for analyzing this data lets utilities experiment with different price signals and incentives. By gauging the effect on overall load and on grid constraints, utilities can maximize the return on existing transmission assets and reduce the need for new investment. Just as important, utilities can use the new data to develop regulated and competitive products for specific customer niches. This is more than a profit opportunity. It is also part of a utility’s public obligation.
Perspective
New realities demand new direction from utilities.
Perspective
New realities demand new direction from utilities.
Frontlines
The blackout could doom deregulation, but why treat reliability and reform as either-or?
Frontlines
The blackout could doom deregulation, but why treat reliability and reform as either-or?
Driving west near Cleveland on the Ohio Turnpike back in August, a few days after the big blackout, I saw what looked like a small helicopter hovering up ahead, about 25 feet from the top of a transmission tower.
Was this a prank? Had terrorists struck? Or was it the local TV news station, just trying to get a closer look?