It would join an RTO but dictate the terms-a dangerous game that has the industry talking.
It would join an RTO but dictate the terms-a dangerous game that has the industry talking. When I talked a few months ago with AEP President and CEO Linn Draper Jr., he discussed how his company would have joined the PJM RTO in March were it not for the backlash he was getting from certain state regulators.
The grid does not need a Marshall Plan for new investment.
We don't know what caused the Aug. 14 blackout, but somehow we know that our transmission system needs $50 billion to $100 billion in investment and upgrades. And utilities need higher returns to raise that kind of money. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.
The reality is that we aren't short $50 billion or $100 billion in our transmission system. The study said to support that proposition just doesn't do the job.
Commission Watch
The industry requires new analytical tools to incorporate the realities of today's higher risk operating and investment environment into the equity allowance process.
Perspective
New realities demand new direction from utilities.
Perspective
FERC should consider a two-part tariff to boost transmission investment.
Transmission, rather than generation, is generally the constraint preventing customers from getting the power they desire.
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.
Commission Watch
How far will FERC go to restore market confidence?
Despite keen industry interest in FERC's proposed "rules of the road," aka new codes of conduct, it appears the industry will have to wait. FERC recently granted extensions for filings, and the commission will not gather all reply comments until Sept. 18. Filings so far point to differences over the proposals, especially in time frames for reporting bad behavior, appropriate monetary penalties, and defining to whom the rules apply.
Perspective
Proper authority and market monitoring and mitigation could make the system work.
In the last few years we have watched appalled as the western U.S. electricity markets collapsed, taking with them the solvency and viability of several very large participants, including the California Power Exchange (PX).
Technology Corridor
Outdated "wisdom" wastes the nation's electricity infrastructure. Distributed CH&P is the answer.
The use of wasted heat-which now comprises two-thirds of the energy value of the fuels used in generat-ing electricity in this country-may be the most important benefit from using more distributed generation.
The venerated process may get a makeover.
Like dough in the hands of a crazed pizza chef, merchant power generators have been tossed and turned in tumultuous markets over the past two years. Further uncertainties over market restructuring have pushed many merchants to the brink of despair-and beyond.
But on June 10, 2003, a glimmer of hope appeared at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and it came from an unexpected source: Entergy Services Inc., the holding company for Entergy's regulated utilities.