In a joint survey conducted by Navigant Consulting and Public Utilities Fortnightly, utility executives identify the biggest challenge to their business.
Can natural gas supply keep up with demand for power?
Power Measurement
What's causing price volatility, and will it last?
Coal markets have changed dramatically in the last year, but uncertainty lingers over how permanent the changes will be. After relative stability in the 1990s, coal markets, like other energy commodities, have become increasingly volatile, although high prices should not be confused with increased volatility.
Commission Watch
The industry requires new analytical tools to incorporate the realities of today's higher risk operating and investment environment into the equity allowance process.
PJM would dictate grid expansion, even if not needed for reliability, and then push the cost of the upgrades on those who use them the most.
Chairman Pat Wood and his Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) may well have given up on attempts to impose a standard market design (SMD) on the electric utility industry, but that doesn't mean the nation's grid system operators won't try the same thing.
ISO's new ICAP scheme seen as subsidy for the gen sector.
It is hard tyo foresee abandoning the discounted cash flow method relied upon so heavily for the past couple of decades.
In the Feb. 15, 2003, edition of , Jonathan Lesser says that regulators need to rethink the traditional discounted cash flow (DCF) method for finding the cost of capital, or "at the very least, regulators should no longer rely solely on the DCF to set allowed returns."
Today's volatile markets upset the discounted cash flow model, and others.
DCF Utility Valuation: Still the Gold Standard?