The road to the current reliability crisis is paved with four decades of bad policy decisions.

 

The technical causes of the great Northeast blackout of August 2003 are coming into focus. For reasons yet unknown as of press time, transmission lines in northern Ohio were lost to the grid, and within seconds 50 million people in the United States and Canada were without power. Soon we will no doubt know the specific reasons for the blackout, and technical corrections and improvements will be made.

PJM would dictate grid expansion, even if not needed for reliability, and then push the cost of the upgrades on those who use them the most.

Chairman Pat Wood and his Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) may well have given up on attempts to impose a standard market design (SMD) on the electric utility industry, but that doesn't mean the nation's grid system operators won't try the same thing.

Judy Pensabene has joined the Republican staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as deputy chief counsel. She is returning to the committee, where she worked from 1990 to 1995, after serving as vice president of federal affairs at Constellation Energy Group.

Entergy announced that Peter P. Schneider has been hired as vice president of Nuclear Human Resources, a new position within the company. Schneider's prior experience includes stints at Human Resources Strategies and Solutions, Inc., Exelon, and PECO Energy.

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NYPA's CEO clarifies details of the Power Authority's auction of nukes to Entergy.

Several comments are in order concerning the analysis by Dan Donoghue and David Haarmeyer of the pending sale of the New York Power Authority's Indian Point 3 and James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plants to Entergy Corp. (, June 15, 2000, p. 90).

News Analysis

 

NYPA's Nuke Auction: More at Stake Than Price?