ISO

Several recent complaints involving PJM and now at FERC pose fundamental questions on how regulators and grid operators should attempt to price and allocate grid rights and costs. Is the transmission network a public asset, with costs that must be apportioned on principles of equity? Or, rather, is transmission an instrument of commerce, to be priced so as to maximize trade?

There is a certain irony in Ontario’s decision to phase out its coal-fired generation at a time when the demand for new coal-fired plants is growing in the rest of North America. Global Energy’s analysis of demand for coal for power generation suggests that growth in demand for coal is likely to continue and even challenge coal producers to step up their productive capacity and deliverability to meet that demand.

The July 11, 2006, edition of the Wall Street Journal contained an excellent opinion piece which posed the question: “What does ‘energy security’ really mean?” What is so striking about his article is that his analysis easily could describe power industry politics between low-cost states (suppliers) and high-cost states (consumers).

In May 2, 2006, the NERC board of trustees adopted the Critical Infrastructure Protection Cyber Security Standard. This article provides some answers to questions in the form of security program development, implementation, and operation.

Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck has complained that he and the utility have unfairly been demonized in the public and in the press. In one interview with a Maryland paper, Shattuck showed distress over the verbal abuse his executives had received from angry ratepayers. And who can blame him?

Although much work remains before all its benefits will be realized, the Forward Capacity Market satisfies the criteria for a capacity system that works, while avoiding the need for the centralized planning and control that Larry Kellerman appears to advocate in “Mending Our Broken Capacity Markets.”

With upward of 50 percent of the utility industry’s workforce approaching retirement, the industry’s leadership, at all levels, must come to grips with this enormous challenge. This looming demographic challenge is not simply a human-resources problem. For most of the industry, it poses a very real threat to the bottom line and touches upon the fundamental ability of the company to pursue its mission. The path to survival will require non-traditional thinking around all the people levers—staffing, work planning, compensation, work processes, performance management, development, job and organization design, and, most important, leadership.

Did Congress really invite the industry to re-examine the concept of economic dispatch, as practiced by the regional grid operators and RTOs, through market bids, day-ahead markets, a centralized auction, and a uniform market-clearing price? Perhaps not, but skeptics of RTO practice have called the bluff, if that’s what it was.

(July 2006) The New York Independent System Operator named Rana Mukerji to serve as vice president, market structures. CMS Energy elected Jon E. Barfield as an interim appointee to the company's board of directors and also re-elected 10 incumbents. Pepco Holdings Inc. elected Frank O. Heintz and Lester P. Silverman to the board of directors. TXU Corp. elected the following directors: E. Gail de Planque, Leldon E. Echols, Kerney Laday, Jack E. Little, Gerardo I. Lopez, J.E. Oesterreicher, Michael W. Ranger, Leonard H. Roberts, Glenn F. Tilton, and C. John Wilder. And others...

“Leadership is the recognition that we are fiduciaries of the customer’s dollars and we have to be as efficient as we possibly can be because it is their money and not ours.”