(telecommunications, environment).
State utility commissioners have gone on record asking Congress to "call them first" before it legislatively restructures the electric industry.
That resolution prompted some of the liveliest debate at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners' (NARUC) Winter Committee meetings. About 1,000 people attended the 10-day event in Washington, DC, February 21 to March 1.
Forecasts Send ROEs Wide of the Mark
In a recent "Offpeak" ("Forecasting is Just That," Jan. 1, 1996, p. 54), David Foti and Clay Denton report data showing the percentage of error found in various seven-year forecasts of natural gas prices (1988-94) produced by the American Gas Association (A.G.A.), Energy Information Administration (EIA), DRI/McGraw-Hill (DRI), Gas Research Institute, and WEFA Group. These errors ranged from approximately 50 to 95 percent.
The authors asked pipelines
and LDCs how they used storage.
Leasing activity proved a surprise.
Since deregulation, the natural gas industry has seen tremendous changes in every sector. Competitive pressures have reorganized business strategies so much that only those firms that adapt will survive. One area that stands ripe for change is the natural gas storage market.
Why build gas storage fields?
With a CTC likely to cover stranded costs,
aggregators must somehow find power cheap
enough to offer real savings.
Retail aggregation: Wherever you stand, it appears 1998 could be the year of reckoning.
By then (em say those watching the future of aggregation in the "leader" states of California, New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire (em rulemakings will have sorted out the issues of stranded costs, distribution, and reliability.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has announced that it will revisit its 30-year old electric utility merger policy (Docket No. RM96-6-000). The Notice of Inquiry (NOI), Merger Policy Under the Federal Power Act, also orders an expedited hearing on the proposed merger between Wisconsin Electric Power Co. (WEPCO) and Northern States Power Co. (NSP) to form "Primergy" (Docket Nos.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved a policy statement, Alternatives to Traditional Cost of Service Ratemaking for Natural Gas Pipelines, giving pipelines greater flexibility to use market-based, negotiated/ recourse, incentive, and other alternative rates (Docket Nos. RM95-6-000 and RM96-7-000). Pipelines may negotiate new rates with customers, but may not negotiate services that might degrade open-access service under Order 636. The FERC is still considering what type of service flexibility it should allow.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on January 24 held a technical conference on independent system operators (ISOs) and power pools, as part of its electric transmission open-access Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR). The FERC's question: Is it necessary in a competitive market for utilities to transfer control over transmission facilities to ISOs, and if so, what form should ISOs take? (18 CFR Part 35, Docket Nos. RM95-8-000 and RM94-7-001).
Divest yourself of generating plants or allow retail sales by competitors, and PURPA's mandatory purchase clause in section 210 will no longer hold.
That's the basic deal to be offered to investor-owned electric utilities under the Electric Power Competition Act of 1996 (H.R. 2929), a new bill to amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) introduced by Rep. Edward J.
On a bookshelf behind my desk I've stacked up a few older issues of PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY. Some of them go back more than a half-century. Every so often I pull down a copy to see if I can learn anything from history.
Yes, the advertisements appear quaint (Royal typewriters; IBM punch-card machines; Ditto-brand duplicators). But some of the ideas still have legs, with lively quotations from the likes of Louis Brandeis, Harold Ickes, Walter Lippmann, and Fiorello La Guardia.
Competition from Order 636 has gas customers rethinking their firm capacity options.
Just when everyone thought we had put Order 636 behind us, up pops perhaps our greatest challenge yet: the turnback (or "decontracting") of firm capacity on interstate natural gas pipelines. This phenomenon, now emerging on a few major pipelines, such as Transwestern, El Paso, and Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America, inspires different reactions.