The commission nails companies, but orders payments.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finally dealt with the many issues that arose out of the 2000/2001 California energy crisis. On June 25, FERC issued a slew of orders that settled some old disputes, gave a glimpse of the future, and offered insight into the commissioners' thinking.
Will the state launch a full-scale rollout of dynamic tariffs?
A pilot program in California is putting dynamic pricing and advanced metering to the test.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a Statewide Pricing Pilot (SPP) in March,1 at a cost of approximately $10 million, including metering, project planning, management, evaluation, and concurrent market research on non-pilot participants focused on customer preferences for rate options.2
The SPP has the following objectives:
Will the state launch a full-scale rollout of dynamic tariffs?
A pilot program in California is putting dynamic pricing and advanced metering to the test.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a Statewide Pricing Pilot (SPP) in March,1 at a cost of approximately $10 million, including metering, project planning, management, evaluation, and concurrent market research on non-pilot participants focused on customer preferences for rate options.2
The SPP has the following objectives:
By 2020, nearly half the workforce will be female and non-white. Are utilities ready?
The collapse of wholesale markets has utilities once again making the purchasing decisions, and taking all the risks.
If a common theme is emerging from the various policy directions across the country, it seems to be that responsibility for supply resources is moving away from open markets and back into the hands of load-serving utilities.
PUC could oust PG&E from the project, finding no need for an upgrade.
Nearly a year after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its blessing for upgrading California's notorious "Path 15" transmission bottleneck, an administrative law judge (ALJ) at the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has thrown a monkeywrench into the plan.
Experts say that many of the new policies by the PUC and the state legislature seem to be putting the Golden State on track for more blackouts.
Although California's electricity crisis reached its worst point two years ago, utilities, consumers, and other market participants continue to fear a recurrence of the supply shortages and price spikes that added $40 billion to the cost of electricity over a horrific 13-month period.
New Positions:
Martin Crotty and Dr. Soumen Ghosh joined SeaWest WindPower Inc. as senior vice president of operations and maintenance, and senior product manager of data services, respectively. Most recently, Crotty was director of operations for the Western Region of NRG Energy. Ghosh spent more than five years at ABB System Control and more than nine years at CMC.
Retail Energy in 2002: A Regulatory About-face
State regulators redouble their deregulation efforts-or abandon them altogether.
The past year was a phenomenal one for state public utility regulators.
A historical confluence of events, including the catastrophic failure of the move to deregulate California electric markets and a nationwide epidemic of corporate financial scandals, led in large part by energy trading firms, helps to explain the developments.
Looking beyond ranking utilities on price.
It's tempting to compare rates between utilities- to use those simple rankings as regulatory carrots and sticks-but those who do may play a dangerous game. While such rankings may appear compelling, they can add an inappropriate bias to the regulatory process and penalize well-performing electric utilities that operate in high-cost service territories, such as large metropolitan areas.