FERC would relax price caps—sending rates skyward—to encourage customers to curtail loads.
About four months ago, at a conference at Stanford University’s Center for International Development, the economist and utility industry expert Frank Wolak turned heads with a not-so-new but very outrageous idea.
The need for many hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditures creates huge opportunities and challenges, especially in a more challenging credit environment.
An estimated $900 billion of direct infrastructure investment will be required by electric utilities over the next 15 years, and $750 million already is in place. Nukes, renewables, low-carbon technologies, combined-cycle gas turbines—all have faced cost challenges. The magnitude of the numbers requires a multi-pronged approach.
The big challenge facing the Northeast energy markets.
The Northeast energy markets are working hard to establish new levels of regional coordination and cooperation. The region’s concerted effort is essential to resolving some of the industry’s toughest issues since the individual markets evolved. These issues include the elimination, reduction, or bridging of seams issues that prevent the economic transfer of capacity and energy between neighboring wholesale electricity markets, or control areas, as a result of incompatible market rules or designs.
Electric shortages and the generation overbuild continue to co-exist.
While maintaining its stance as the most sophisticated competitive electricity market in the country, PJM still faces several challenges, all of which are augmented by its expanded footprint. Most prominent is the RTO’s plan to implement a new reliability pricing model. Further, parts of PJM are ailing from transmission congestion issues that limit access to abundant, cheap power sources in the region.
(February 2007) The Electric Power Research Institute appointed Bryan Hannegan vice president for environment research and development. PNGC Power named John Prescott senior vice president of power supply. Nora Mead Brownell joined the Comverge Inc. board of directors. The Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator Inc. announced the election of two new members to its board of directors: Michael J. Curran and Eugene W. Zeltmann. And others...
Policymakers are setting sights on new challenges facing utilities.
Utilities in the United States are heading into uncharted territories, and the regulatory landscape is changing accordingly. To learn what it takes to tame this new territory, we spoke with three FERC commissioners, a state regulator, and a Western governor.
As rate disallowances become more commonplace and capital requirements expand, infrastructure development will come with a higher price tag.
As the industry’s regulatory risks and capital requirements expand, financing will come with a higher price tag—and another cost pressure in the ratemaking process.
How online monitoring can prevent costly failures.
The march of technology, the urgent call for greater grid investment, and a painful recent past have caught up with the utilities industry. One key area of preventative maintenance for utilities is the transformer, many of which are decades old. Representing approximately $200 billion in investment, these units—which currently number approximately 100,000—can’t be replaced overnight.
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.
Congress gives FERC an impossible task: Craft long-term transmission rights to save native load from paying grid congestion costs.
If “perfect” be the enemy of the “good,” then look no further for proof than in Federal Power Act section 217(b)(4), enacted by Congress in EPACT 2005.
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