Guessing Mother Nature's Next Move
What can be done to improve weather prediction and load forecasts?
Improving the day-ahead weather and load forecast by just 1 degree Fahrenheit would have huge financial benefits for the industry.
ISO New England
One Fine Reliability Mess
Infrastructure isn't keeping pace. So how to "help" the market without killing it?
What's the right price signal to bring forth enough infrastructure to maintain reliability over the long haul? Moreover, if such a model exists, can it work without stifling competitive markets?
Capacity Planning: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Market-Power Tests: A review of FERC’s market-based rate (MBR) screens, from theory to application.
FERC’s market-power screens have been tested and found wanting in some areas. The author examines the screens’ strengths and weaknesses, then proposes future solutions.
Spot-Market Clearing
Solving the electricity credit malaise.
A monthly billing cycle results in exposures of up to 60 days’ settlement. Participant default is likely, and the potential loss from such an event is significant. Spot-market clearing can solve these problems.
Capacity Markets: A Bridge to Recovery?
A review of the ongoing evolution of market design.
While it appears that capacity markets are here to stay, there is little consensus regarding the best design. Markets in the United States are in a state of flux, with debate raging over many different capacity market pricing schemes. While the winning recipe has yet to be selected, it is likely that participants in certain markets will witness significant changes.
Commission Watch
What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.
Commission Watch
What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.
While the electric utility industry has largely agreed on what elements to include in a standard market design (SMD) to govern wholesale power trading in a given region, recent experience shows that the regulators from time to time have overlooked a number of things.
An Expensive Experiment? RTO Dollars and Sense
Financial data raises doubts about whether deregulation benefits outweigh costs.
This year, U.S. electricity consumers will spend more than $1 billion financing the operation of six RTOs. RTO costs have nearly doubled since 2001. Restructuring the energy industry was more costly and more risky than anticipated, and reasonable estimates of RTO costs outweigh nearly all of the benefits anticipated.
PJM/Midwest Market: Two Rival Groups Battle Over Grid Pricing
Should transmission owners get paid extra for distance and voltage?
While the Midwest now appears set on competitive bidding for the electricity commodity, taking from PJM such tried-and-true elements as locational marginal pricing, financial transmission rights, and a day-ahead market with a security-constrained dispatch, the region remains split over the pricing of transmission.
Transmission Upgrades: Who Pays?
Transmission Upgrades:
Transmission Upgrades:
How to allocate the costs.
Efforts to establish and quantify congestion-reduction and loss-reduction projects are progressing in electric markets with locational marginal price (LMP) regimes. The Path 15 upgrade approval by the California ISO two years ago was largely based upon its economic benefits. A draft report from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), , states that ERCOT will consider transmission projects that are "economically justified by the reduction of congestion and losses."1
State Regulators: Driven By Reliability
Can natural gas supply keep up with demand for power?
STATE REGULATORS:
Can natural gas supply keep up with demand for power?
Interviews
Things are looking up for the energy industry, but tough issues remain. Regulators-forced to grapple with the mismatch between volatile natural-gas prices and years of building gas-fired power plants-have learned a thing or two. They now insist on new rate schemes and risk-management methods while promoting the use of liquefied natural gas.