A New Solid South
Where Entergy leads, will Wal-Mart follow?
Everyone is talking about Entergy's move to form a single-company RTO-lite across its service territory in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Southwest Power Pool
RTOs: The Creditworthiness Conundrum
IOUs, RTOs duke it out over standardization.
Have regional transmission operators (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) asked for excessive levels of credit from customers? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must face that difficult question as it investigates whether to institute a rulemaking on credit-related issues for service provided by ISOs, RTOs, and transmission providers.
Solving The Crisis In Unscheduled Power
While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.
How should power flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities be priced? The author proposes a formula.
MISO: Building The Perfect Beast
Seams, holes, and historic precedent challenge the Midwest ISO's evolution.
As it addresses problems that contributed to last August’s blackout, the Midwest ISO struggles with staffing, “grandfathered” service agreements, and integration issues.
Transmission Investment: All Talk and Little Action
Except for local reinforcements and new generation interconnections, few transmission construction proposals are moving forward.
Just how much money should be spent on transmission infrastructure in the coming years? The answer depends on which study you read, but despite discrepancies, several threads among the current studies can be ascertained.
People
People for June 2004.
Positions filled at Southern Co., Mirant, MISO, and others.
Consolidating Co-ops
Like it or not, changes are coming for electric cooperatives. Fewer and bigger might be the inevitable result.
Like it or not, changes are coming for electric cooperatives. Fewer and bigger might be the inevitable result.
When power planners at Basin Electric Power Cooperative began trying to decide how and where the company's next big power plant would be built, they did what a co-op does best -they reached out and formed a coalition.
Frontlines: You're Fired!
Utilities have little to show for the millions they pay in campaign contributions.
If Donald Trump could call Congress on the carpet, he would send lawmakers packing with those two now infamous words, “You’re fired!” from his reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Now think of how many times Congress has failed to pass an energy bill without incident.
The Generation Glut: When Will It End?
An analysis of the timing, location, and mix of new capacity additions that may be needed in the future.
An analysis of the timing, location, and mix of new capacity additions that may be needed in the future.
Plants for Sale: Pricing the New Wave
Financial players and load-serving utilities are looking for power asset deals.
Financial players and load-serving utilities are looking for power asset deals.
Despite talk of wide bid-ask spreads in the past two tumultuous years, some 60 sales of generation assets have been announced. These sales cover more than 22 GW of capacity, valued on a cash-and-debt basis at approximately $11 billion. A wide variety of buyers and sellers have participated in the sales activity, with a pronounced entry by financial players (investment banks and private equity firms) and load-serving entities (LSEs) looking for capacity to serve their load.