News Digest
Dynegy's David Francis, vice president for western power trading, testified on Dec. 21 on why he thought the ISO was bending the rules:
News Digest
REC
Energy Retailing: Setting a Standard Offer for Every Season
Sending Price Signals, Without Illegal Tying
For deregulation to work, consumers must see the real price-- including all utility costs.
Mergers and the Public Interest: Saving the Savings for the Poorest Customers
How Colorado's settlement in the Xcel merger builds a case for treating needy ratepayers as a separate class entitled to merger benefits.
Electric Retailing: When Will I See Profits?
Deregulation Abroad: Still Reaching Its Potential
Wait for the "second wave," when new products help suppliers escape the trench warfare of pricing.
Frontlines
How 165 lawyers were mostly on the wrong side in the biggest electric merger to date.
With Warren Buffet buying up MidAmerican Energy as his own personal utility, and Bill Gates taking a stake in Avista, the standard electric merger starts to look tame.
For that and other reasons, I believe it's all but certain that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will soon OK the electric industry's biggest-ever merger, combining American Electric Power Co. with Central and South West Corp.
Getting It Right: The Real Cost Impacts of a Renewables Portfolio Standard
How to justify green power without apologizing for the price.
.Tx
Policymakers have shown considerable interest in the concept of a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), and how it might affect the cost of energy.
The RPS would require electricity providers to include a small amount of renewables-based power - typically less than 3 percent or 4 percent - in their resource mix.
1999 ROE Rate Case Survey
(December 1999) A survey of utility rate decisions affecting authorized rates of return on common equity (ROE), as issued by state public utility commissions (PUCs) during the period Sept. 30, 1998 to Sept. 30, 1999, indicates a small but discernible trend toward lower returns. There is no clear evidence, however, that PUCs are rethinking their assessment of utility investment risk to reflect divestitures of generation assets or a retrenchment of utility functions toward the model of a stand-alone wires or distribution company.
News Digest
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.
Special Report
They see utilities responding, but fear outlying areas are overlooked.
Despite reports of year 2000-readiness from virtually all electric utilities, and a promise from the U.S. Department of Energy to pressure the laggards, some customers still fear being left in the dark on Jan. 1, 2000. That view may surprise some, but it emerged clearly from the conference held in Chicago August 5-6 by the North American Electric Reliability Council, to update utilities and their customers on electric industry progress in Y2K problem mitigation.
Off Peak
Co-ops beat utility rates in 15 states. But why not more?
Despite the fact that their customers are scattered throughout the most remote reaches of the 46 U.S. states they service, electrical cooperatives in 15 states offer residential rates lower than the averages for all utilities in those states.
A comparison of 1997 rates by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association finds that another 24 states have rates that are just 1 to 10 percent higher than the utilities' state averages.