The monopoly utility model was once expansive and revolutionary. Now, it is contracting and preservationist.
To measure efficiency, you needn’t count every customer.
Securitization fails the test for financing environmental capex.
Utilities seeking financing for environmental upgrades should look to the markets for debt and equity, rather than trying to securitize those costs.
Three CEOs, three business models, one shared outlook.
Cheap gas, regulatory uncertainties, and a technology revolution are re-making the U.S. utility industry. Top executives at three very different companies—CMS, NRG, and the Midwest ISO—share their outlook on the industry’s transformative changes.
How to develop balanced revenue-backed financing to manage the impacts of governmental mandates.
Severe upward pressure on electric rates after a decade of stability has regulators, legislators, utility executives, consumer advocates, and myriad other stakeholders searching for solutions. Revenue-backed financing can mitigate many of these mandate-driven rate increases significantly. These programs must, however, be designed to eliminate the inefficiencies and inequities that can be associated with revenue set-aside programs.
Who should have "green tag" ownership under power purchase agreements, the buyers or the sellers?
A legal controversy is brewing in the electric industry over who should reap the financial benefits of the green characteristics of power plants, under existing power purchase agreements (PPA).
News Digest
Mitigation depends on the market. For regulators, that means a going-forward view.
If regulators allow recovery of some stranded costs, they should at least ensure that utilities operate their generating plants in a manner consistent with the actions taken by other owners of similar resources that participate in competitive markets for bulk power.
A priori estimates of stranded costs are almost certain to be wrong. Therefore, regulators should adjust recovery to reflect actual events (em in particular market prices for electricity.
Hurdles loom in 10 states eyeing deregulation.
Lawsuits and delayed deadlines. A "go slow" approach and more studies. Stranded cost debates and commission reports that make recommendations but avoid concrete action.
With a new wave of states addressing electric competition, these are a few of the themes that have emerged in 1998. In most states, the process has been slow, though the start of competition does, in fact, appear closer in many.
FERC
MIDWEST POWER PRICES. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman James Hoecker announced July 15 that as soon as the staff presents its findings, the FERC will deal with the complaints filed by Cinergy, Steel Dynamics Inc., and others asking for regulatory relief from the late June run-up in Midwest bulk power prices (as high as $7,500 per megawatt-hour), and for a price cap set at $100/MWh. Nevertheless, Hoecker advised that the FERC was in "no hurry," and that the remedies available to it were not entirely clear. Docket No. EL98-53 (Cinergy), filed June 29, 1998; Docket No.