Public Power & RTOs: How To Avoid Making Swiss Cheese
Several issues need to be addressed before municipals and co-ops participate significantly in regional transmission organizations.
ATC
Three-Legged Stool
The smart money now treats transmission as a player. Just like generation. Just like load.
Over at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, new chairman Pat Wood has let it be known if he had been in charge, he would have postponed Order 2000.
The Rules of the Grid: Transmission Policy and Motives Gehind It
Making sense of RTO Week, the mediation talks, and FERC's promised new rulemaking.
Making sense of RTO Week, the mediation talks, and FERC's promised new rulemaking.
Dynegy's senior vice president Peter Esposito didn't think much about the celebrated mediation talks on forming a single, unified transmission grid for the Northeast U.S.
Don't Rush the Seamstress: Second Thoughts on the Marriage of the Northeast Grids
Why a standard design in each ISO is no guarantee of regional coordination.
By Marija Ilic and Leonard Hyman
Why a standard design in each ISO is no guarantee of regional coordination.
How do you complete an efficient transaction that requires the cooperation of two or more markets when each is operated independently of the other?
News Digest
Dynegy's David Francis, vice president for western power trading, testified on Dec. 21 on why he thought the ISO was bending the rules:
News Digest
Internet Mavericks: Still Working Out of the Garage?
e-Commerce is consolidating, but there's room for the little guys too.
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 utilitiesor better yet, the large conglomerates and multi-company joint venturesto attract capital and introduce the new ideas?
Frontlines
Two new transcos wake up to a stack of protests.
Frontlines
Pancakes for Breakfast?
Two new transcos wake up to a stack of protests.
With the first deadline only a month away, electric utilities have launched trial balloons before filing plans at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for regional transmission organizations (RTOs).
News Digest
Mergers & Acquisitions
News Digest
Frontlines
How 165 lawyers were mostly on the wrong side in the biggest electric merger to date.
With Warren Buffet buying up MidAmerican Energy as his own personal utility, and Bill Gates taking a stake in Avista, the standard electric merger starts to look tame.
For that and other reasons, I believe it's all but certain that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will soon OK the electric industry's biggest-ever merger, combining American Electric Power Co. with Central and South West Corp.
Off Peak
What we're not arguing about is important too.
More than 200 organizations and individuals have staked out positions in comments filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in response to its proposed rulemaking on regional transmission organizations (RTOs).
The major debate in the reply briefs is on three issues.
Mandatory vs. Voluntary Participation? The FERC's proposed rulemaking relies on strong RTOs rising spontaneously from the primeval murk of the conflicting interests of the states and industry participants.