Become a PUF Member Organization

FERC

Plants for Sale: Pricing the New Wave

Financial players and load-serving utilities are looking for power asset deals.

Approximately 60 generation asset sales have been announced in the past two years, and future transaction activity is likely to accelerate. Who are the players, and where might the available plants be located?
Byline: 

David Haarmeyer, Mark Griffith, and Grant Thain

Read Entire Article

European Infrastructure: Billions Needed in Investment

Electricity demand in parts of Europe is on the rise.

A legal and institutional regulatory framework for the EU should spur significant infrastructure investment in the region—if 15 countries can find a way to harmonize their regulatory regimes.
Byline: 

Branko Terzic and Thomas J. Flaherty

Read Entire Article

Taking Utilities Private: Return of the Barbarians

Experts debate whether KKR's leveraged buyout of UniSource Energy is right for the industry.

“From a public policy standpoint, should a utility that provides a vital public good be owned by a private group that gains ownership by taking on a high degree of debt (risk)?” Mark T. Williams, executive-in-residence at the Finance & Economics Department at Boston University, identifies the quintessential issue that will no doubt be heatedly debated in boardrooms and commissions as more utility CEOs are tempted to become private utilities through a leveraged buyout transaction. And tempted they will be.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

Read Entire Article

Cross-Sound Blues

Legal challenges continue for the undersea transmission line.

When the Connecticut Siting Council granted a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need approving the Cross-Sound cable in January 2002, it determined that the project would provide a public benefit and would not have an environmental impact constituting “sufficient reason to deny the application.” At the time of this writing, it is in operation pursuant to federal order, while opponents continue to try to shut down the cable. What happened in 2003 to delay the project, and how might the ongoing struggle affect similar projects proposed or under way?
Byline: 

Linda Randell and Bruce McDermott

Read Entire Article

Rethinking Restructuring

Two Cato analysts suggest a return to the past-vertical integration, but now with no state regulators.

The defeat of the energy bill in the Senate last year has thrown electricity restructuring back on its heels. There clearly is no consensus among politicians or academics regarding how this industry ought to be organized or how it might best be regulated. Finding our way out of this morass requires a reconsideration of how we got to this dismal point in our regulatory journey. Doing so suggests a surprising series of conclusions about what has gone wrong and where to go from here.
Byline: 

Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor

Read Entire Article

The Reliability Czar

Is FERC the rightful heir?

The possibility that energy legislation drafted last year won't pass in 2004 has created a power vacuum. Who now is czar of electric utility reliability?
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

Read Entire Article

Generation Reserves: The Grid Security Question

A cost-benefit study shows the value of adding synchronized generating reserves to prevent blackouts on the scale of Aug.14.

A study reveals how increasing the availability and flexibility of generation resources is cheaper than adding transmission.
Byline: 

Rajat K. Deb

Read Entire Article

The Utility Sector: A Wall Street Takeover?

Financial players bring credit depth to energy markets, but will they play by the rules?

The center of gravity for energy marketing and trading is moving from Houston to Wall Street. Who’s in, who’s out, and who’s testing the waters?
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

Read Entire Article

What Is a Power Plant Worth?

The consequences of exuberance are all around us.

Investors put $50 billion into new generating capacity because they expected that electricity restructuring would lead to the formation of a small number of effective, regional transmission organizations, which would make the location of a generating facility less important in the future. Based on that assumption, developers placed many plants close to a source of fuel, not close to market. For many companies, that has turned out to be a fatal mistake.
Byline: 

Edward N. Krapels

Read Entire Article