While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.

Time is running out. It's been more than two years since the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Joint Inadvertent Interchange Taskforce (JIITF), on which I served, issued its white paper[1] proposing how to price the unscheduled power (inadvertent interchange)¹ flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities (BAs).

Seams, holes, and historic precedent challenge the Midwest ISO's evolution.

In a single sentence, Bill Smith of the Organization of MISO States (OMS) summarizes prevailing concerns about the new-and-improved Midwest ISO: "When it starts, it has to work."

Power Measurement

IOUs take action, but other overriding forces will affect prices in the near term.

It's going to be a wild summer for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), courtesy of higher than forecasted load growth, high gas prices, delays and cancellations of renewable resources, and lower than normal hydro generation.

Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

People

New Opportunities:

Stephan T. Haynes, who has been American Electric Power's vice president of risk oversight since January 2002, was named vice president of corporate finance for the company.

Kay G. Priestly was named Entergy Corp.'s vice president of financial issues management. Priestly earlier was managing partner at Arthur Andersen.

Frontlines

Critics say FERC's filed rate doctrine is wrong for the times.

It's quite remarkable how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been able to pound a square peg into a round hole. With not much more than a wink and a smile, FERC has taken a depression-era law meant for monopolies-the Federal Power Act (FPA)-and has made it serve double duty as a foundation for competitive power markets.

Untapped T&D measurement data could make the difference on reliability.

Utility executives rely on sound decision making to determine how resources should be allocated, to ensure that systems operate with a maximum efficiency and reliability at the lowest cost. These executives walk the fine line of deciding where money should be spent to minimize the likelihood of an expensive catastrophe while also achieving a targeted level of reliability. These issues include:

Perspective

Grid reliability is one giant step in mainstreaming the technology.

Wind power is coming of age in the United States. During the past five years, installations have grown by an average 28 percent yearly. Gleaming, high-tech wind turbines now are interconnected to the bulk power grid in some 30 states.

People

New Opportunities:

Southern Co. chose Francis S. Blake to stand for election to its board of directors. Blake is an executive vice president at The Home Depot. Blake's election would bring the board to 11 members.

Mirant announced that M. Michele Burns is the company's new CFO and executive vice president, charged with leading the company's financial restructuring. Burns previously has been executive vice president for Delta Air Lines Inc. and a partner with Arthur Anderson LLP.

Like it or not, changes are coming for electric cooperatives. Fewer and bigger might be the inevitable result.

When power planners at Basin Electric Power Cooperative began trying to decide how and where the company's next big power plant would be built, they did what a co-op does best -they reached out and formed a coalition.