Generators struggle to plan for the future as they cope with an unstable present.
When the acting administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Marianne Horinko, signed the EPA's "routine replacement" rule on Aug. 27, 2003, she proclaimed that the new approach to Clean Air Act regulation would "provide … power plants with the regulatory certainty they need."
We ask merchant grid developers if anything can ever be done.
The blackout of August 2003 should have come as no surprise. The Department of Energy's May 2002 National Transmission Grid Study finds growing evidence that the U.S. transmission system is in urgent need of modernization.
Cross-Sound Cable Co. shows how transmission siting is much harder to do now than in the good old days.
Opposition to electric transmission line projects designed to upgrade the nation's infrastructure can come from a number of sources: the host municipality, adjacent municipalities, the state's executive branch, the legislative branch, commercial entities, ad hoc or long-standing environmental groups, and/or organized citizen groups.
State PUCs
Gas Capacity Rights. The New York PSC told retail suppliers that to serve firm retail gas load they must have rights to firm, non-recallable, primary delivery point pipeline capacity for the five winter months, November through March, or else must augment secondary capacity with a standby charge payable to local distribution companies holding primary rights.
Power Pools & Reliability
SUMMER IN WISCONSIN. Responding to concerns about the electric shortages of the summer of 1997 and fears that they could happen again, Wisconsin PSC Commissioner Joseph P. Mettner has indicated that the state's energy supply outlook for the summer of 1998 appears much better in eastern Wisconsin than it did one year ago.
Mettner noted that Wisconsin's electric supply system is operating with expected reserve margins of 19.2 percent. But he cautioned that electric power flows do not respect borders.
The article "Risk and Rates for the Regulated Distribution," by Maloney, McCormick, and Tyler (Sept. 1, 1997, p. 26) was interesting. For people with the vested interests of the authors, unbundling offers the golden opportunity of reducing regulated rates without actually having a formal rate decrease. That comes about by shifting on paper as much revenue as possible from the regulated disco to the competitive genco, while of course leaving all the costs with which that revenue is associated within the disco.
Regarding the Hanser, Wharton and Fox-Penner article on real-time pricing ("Real-Time Pricing (em Restructuring's Big Bang," PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY, March 1, 1997, p. 22), the authors state that RTP programs will defer capacity needs and reduce peak loads. I doubt it. People don't mind paying high prices per kWh for a few hours each year. On the other hand, there is nothing like an old-fashion ratchet to get people to reduce their peak demand.
Charles Studness is not the type of person I would like to loan money to. I say this because if interest rates dropped in the future he would believe he was now entitled to borrow at the lower rates and not pay me what was owed.
In his latest diatribe against stranded-cost recovery ("Stranded-cost Recovery: It's Un-American," Financial News, July 15, 1996, p. 43), Studness tells us that recovery of stranded costs will keep Americans from purchasing electricity at the competitive price.
It certainly will; however, first all debts must be paid.
ADFITs: Not a Phantom
In his article, "Phantom Taxes: The Big Payback" (Courts and Commissions, 7/1/96, p. 41), David Wise argues that utility recovery of stranded facility costs should be reduced by the balance of accumulated deferred income taxes (ADFIT) attributable to stranded costs.