Original-cost ratemaking doesn’t suit the challenges facing utilities today.
Levelized rates can serve customers’ interests, while also accelerating capital investment and providing an economic stimulus to the economy.
Delivering value in a zero-growth market.
Disruptive technologies and resource shifts are changing the utility business model. Market factors are driving companies toward four possible paths.
Presidential attention raises the priority level for cybersecurity.
Have industry leaders and regulators turned a corner on efforts to make the grid more secure?
Only behavioral change will reduce energy consumption.
Standards and technology don't reduce energy consumption, despite the claims of efficiency zealots. Real energy savings only come through behavioral change.
Virginia brings a new coal-fired plant online.
Reports of coal’s demise are exaggerated. This summer, Dominion cleared the regulatory gauntlet to start up a new coal plant. Whether the example can be replicated might hinge on state incentives—and the forward price of natural gas.
MATS compliance now, with flexibility for the future.
Conflicting demands for complying with EPA’s MATS rule favor a single control technology to deal with multiple types of power plant emissions.
The jurisdictional battle rages on, with FERC and EPA squaring off against the states.
When Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led an attack on the federal Springfield Armory in January 1787—the spark that ignited the federalist movement—he scarcely could’ve guessed that now, 225 years later, his spiritual descendants would still be fighting that very same battle.
NU names new president and COO at Connecticut Light and Power; Jim Stanley leaves Duke to become NIPSCO CEO; plus executive changes at FirstEnergy, ConEdison, Southwest Power Pool, Duke-Progress Energy, EEI, and others.
Making room on the local grid for small-scale PV.
For the first time, perhaps, the electric utility industry may need to keep track not only of peak load, but also of minimum load, as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reviews a proposal by the Solar Energy Industries Association to employ a new definition of minimum load under a new, relaxed threshold test that would govern eligibility for fast-tracking of applications by generation developers to interconnect new, small-scale solar energy projects to the local utility distribution grid.