IT officers are getting more efficient, but guess what keeps them up at night?
Ever-present security concerns are keeping utility chief information officers up at night. With their IT budgets under constraints in a back-to-basics era, four CIOs speak out about their concerns over funding, staffing, and the future.
How to develop, implement, and operate a security program.
In May 2, 2006, the NERC board of trustees adopted the Critical Infrastructure Protection Cyber Security Standard. This article provides some answers to questions in the form of security program development, implementation, and operation.
Innovation must play a key role in each company.
An EPRI vice president cites areas of concern in each part of the electricity value chain. How can IOUs overcome the formidable difficulties ahead of them?
As NERC’s CIP standards advance, utilities move ahead, haltingly, with implementation.
Utilities are preparing for the eventual enforcement of new reliability rules from the North American Electric Reliability Council. As the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission continues its review of the proposed standards, we take a closer look at the effect of these rules on cyber-security, and offer a broad overview of all of the proposed reliability standards.
How Congress opened another can of worms with its call for regional joint boards to study power-plant dispatch.
Did Congress really invite the industry to re-examine the concept of economic dispatch, as practiced by the regional grid operators and RTOs, through market bids, day-ahead markets, a centralized auction, and a uniform market-clearing price? Perhaps not, but skeptics of RTO practice have called the bluff, if that’s what it was.
Forget the mega merger as a means to acquire new power plants. FERC’s new rules may offer a better path.
Forget the mega merger as a means to acquire new power plants. FERC’s new rules may offer a better path.
How the maturation of location tracking can increase efficiency.
To realize the enterprise benefits of field-force management, utility executives and managers should pay keen attention to advancements in real-time location tracking; fully extending mobile workforce management in the enterprise, back-end connectivity with enterprise-wide systems; and security of mobile applications.
Using scenario analysis to help utilities map out their strategies.
If you were a utility executive today would you consider building a new nuclear power plant? What if the United States decided to implement the emission reductions called for in the Kyoto Protocol without adopting it? How might your business be affected by another 9/11-scale terrorist attack on a U.S. target? What would be the impact of growing reliability problems in key U.S. power markets? Some utility executives are asking themselves just such questions.
Cooperation and coordination will help the United States avoid an energy-policy confrontation.
China is seeking to acquire resources and infrastructure from all over the world, from the oil fields of Venezuela to new shipyards for building liquefied natural gas tankers in Shanghai. But the country’s acquisition pattern puts it on a collision course with the United States and the rest of the world.
Budgets are expected to increase, even as new IT challenges present themselves.
In our annual technology forum, we talk with tech/information specialists at four companies: Patricia Lawicki at PG&E; Ken Fell at the New York ISO; Mark C. Williamson at American Transmission Co.; and John Seral at GE Energy.