Solving The Crisis In Unscheduled Power
While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.
How should power flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities be priced? The author proposes a formula.
FERC
Profit Without Costs
An analysis of participant funding in natural gas and electricity markets.
A former FERC chairman asks: Should the cost of transmission infrastructure improvements be rolled-in with the costs shouldered by utility companies and their native customers, even if those customers receive no benefit from the expenditure?
MISO: Building The Perfect Beast
Seams, holes, and historic precedent challenge the Midwest ISO's evolution.
As it addresses problems that contributed to last August’s blackout, the Midwest ISO struggles with staffing, “grandfathered” service agreements, and integration issues.
Business & Money: Fencing in the Regulated Utilities
Credit-rating linkage harms certain power companies. Ring-fencing is the best answer for regulators.
Ring-fencing may be the only regulatory device capable of leveling the playing field and forcing the holding companies to absorb the consequences of failed non-utility investments.
A Market-Access Plan for Vertically Integrated Utilities
Assimilating the best of the regulated-utility and merchant models.
We propose a market-access plan (MAP) that does not advocate sweeping changes. It instead builds on existing VIU frameworks with structural improvements that are technically feasible, cost-effective, and politically practicable. The result assimilates the best of the VIU and merchant models; benefits the industry investment climate; increases the level of low-cost, efficient, and environmentally friendly power supplies; and promises to save customers millions of dollars.
Perspective: Leave Green-Power Quotas to the States
Congress should not impose a federal renewable portfolio standard.
The adoption of an RPS by more than a dozen states has inspired and contributed to proposals for a federal green-power quota. Leave the green-power quotas to the states. PURPA should be amended to include an RPS among the retail policies that can be adopted or rejected by state public service commissions.
Facing the Death Penalty
Did FERC's market power ruling go too far?
Market-based sales put at risk are the financial lifeblood of some utilities, especially those of the multi-billion-dollar, vertically integrated variety. Those that fail FERC's market-power test will be forced to sell their excess generation at cost-based rates — a "death penalty," according to some utility CEOs.
The Devil in the Transmission Data
Untapped T&D measurement data could make the difference on reliability.
As transmission operators are forced to deal with increasingly less comfortable margins of reliability, choices must be made about acceptable levels of risk. Essential to such determinations is the analysis of untapped operational and non-operational data.
Transmission Investment: All Talk and Little Action
Except for local reinforcements and new generation interconnections, few transmission construction proposals are moving forward.
Just how much money should be spent on transmission infrastructure in the coming years? The answer depends on which study you read, but despite discrepancies, several threads among the current studies can be ascertained.
Northwest Passage: BPA's Changing Role
The treacherous journey toward a more efficient and transparent Northwest power market may be nearing its conclusion.
The treacherous journey toward a more efficient and transparent Northwest power market may be nearing its conclusion, as increased funding, more generating capacity, and a burgeoning RTO paint a brighter picture for Bonneville Power Administration.