Aloha, Elections, Committees, and Minions
Lori Burkhart is Managing Editor of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Aloha and leis greeted attendees. NARUC's 130th Annual Meeting took place in Orlando a couple of weeks ago, on November 11 to 14. Kicked off by a Sunday evening reception by the pool, all were ready to get to work.
And work they did. The committee meetings were non-stop action. The only downside being that it was impossible to attend them all.
Take the Committee on Electricity, which met on Monday to discuss "The Visible Hand." Cool title. Carl Pechman, director of NRRI, and Virginia Corporation Commission's Judith Jagdmann, led a lively discussion that looked at the role of the RTO/ISO in markets.
It's a basic tenet of this industry that retail matters are regulated by the states and wholesale issues are regulated by FERC. But it was repeated often in this committee due to frustration with FERC over an amalgam of RTO/ISO issues.
The Committee on Gas featured Paula Glover, CEO of the American Association of Blacks in Energy, who discussed diversity issues. The talk was facilitated by Kimberly O'Guinn, commissioner with the Arkansas PSC.
The Committee on Gas then had a panel on "Approaches to Cyber and Physical Security in the Natural Gas Sector," with an all-star panel moderated by Nick Wagner of the Iowa Utilities Board. Speaking of Commissioner Wagner, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds extolled his virtues in a video.