Technology leaders at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative present their visions of energy IT in the 21st century.

If energy legislation requires all utilities to offer demand-response programs, will your company be ready? A review of advanced metering is in order.

The long period of sub-full-cost pricing in the 1990s caused great rationalization in the coal industry, leaving a much healthier and sensible market. One consequence of this is that the floor price for coal in most regions has risen about 25 percent in the last few years. With natural gas prices expected to remain high for some time, those coal markets where ready capacity is at current demand levels will see steadily high prices.

Scale, synergies, and automation will transform tomorrow’s utilities, as will deregulation. But new management strategies and new technology also will play a part.

The North American CIS market is undergoing a transformation. What should utilities expect from a CIS system? What should they spend? And, is CIS system replacement always the answer?

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.

In the days and weeks following Aug. 14, 2003, politicians scrambled to assess blame for the blackouts that plagued the United States and Canada. Even today, as the blame game pro­ceeds, the precise cause of the grid’s collapse remains uncertain. But Republicans, Democrats, and the utility industry alike seem to agree on one thing: the U.S. power grid needs major investment.