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Consolidating Co-ops

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

Most electric co-ops remain small, local entities. But that historic strength may be keeping them from fulfilling their primary mission—to provide reliable electricity for the lowest possible cost.
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

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Envision the Utility of Tomorrow

How will the industry change in the future?

Scale, synergies, and automation will transform tomorrow’s utilities, as will deregulation. But new management strategies and new technology also will play a part.
Byline: 

Keith Mueller

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CIS: The New Profit Machine

How IT can allow utilities to invest in customers — and even improve returns — without breaking the bank.

The North American CIS market is undergoing a transformation. What should utilities expect from a CIS system? What should they spend? And, is CIS system replacement always the answer?
Byline: 

Lori A. Burkhart

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Retail Risk-Based Pricing

A new approach to rate design.

Customers with greater risk require greater working capital set-asides to address anomalous or unexpected events.
Byline: 

Gary Dorris and Sean Burrows

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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

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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

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Life After CRM

For most energy firms, the returns on investments in customer relationship management have been profoundly disappointing.

From the start, CRM has been an imprecise term that loosely describes a multitude of various capabilities, including sales management, marketing analysis, campaign management, customer contact management, and customer self-service applications. CRM solutions do not necessarily replace CIS systems.
Byline: 

Guerry Waters

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The Near-Term Fix

How to mitigate transmission risk before the next big blackout.

New legislation and bigger power lines won’t solve the immediate problem for the grid: the threat of failure. Energy providers must begin thinking of reliability in terms of days rather than years, and they must roll out programs and enhance technology now to protect assets, as well as customers.
Byline: 

Ralph G. Loretta & James E. Anderson

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