[BETA] Fortnightly

As saving energy becomes a policy priority, utility commissioners struggle to reconcile traditional revenue models with smart metering and smart pricing. Unlocking conservation potential will depend on transforming passive ratepayers into smart consumers. Fortnightly hosts a roundtable discussion with commissioners from six states.

The District of Columbia Public Service Commission successfully has used two little known provisions in the Federal Power Act (FPA) to prevent an aging generating plant crucial to the national capital region’s reliability from being abruptly shut down by Virginia’s environmental regulators. In the end, the immediate threat to the region’s reliability was obviated while the environmental concerns associated with the plant were not ignored. The action resulted in a model for how federal energy regulators and environmental regulators can address similar problems in the future.

 

FERC's call for regional PUCs will force state regulators to declare their allegiance.

How will regulators re-engineer restructuring? That was the theme of the seventh annual convention of the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Regulatory Commissioners (MARUC). But while the theme may have been the re-engineering of restructuring, other regulators felt more inclined to discuss the "re-regulating of restructuring."

THE RECENT INCREASE IN MERGER ACTIVITY IN THE energy and telecommunications industries has concerned state regulators for some time. Such concern reveals how the practical or "local" aspects of business deals often clash with broader national issues reviewed by federal authorities in merger cases.

In electric utility mergers, for instance, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will address effects on competition, rates and regulation.

Mid-American Power, LLC has bought a 53-Mw, coal-fired generating plant, put it on the power grid, and plans to convert the facility into a 300-Mw, gas-fired, combined-cycle plant. Mid-American bought the E.J. Stoneman Station in Cassville, WI, from Dairyland Power Cooperative after almost two years of negotiations. The companies making up Mid-American include Power Systems, Ltd., Burns & McDonnell Engineering, Inc., and WPS-Power Development, Inc. The plant supplies energy to two regional utilities.

Investigations of changes in the structure of the electric utility industry are growing at the state level.

Question: Will your commission still be around in the year 2000? If so, what will it look like? Are you restructuring your commission with the same fervor you devote to electricity, gas, and telecommunications?Response by Nancy McCaffree, Chair, Montana Public Service Commission:

As a regulator I have had the opportunity to listen to economists, energy planners, and other professional soothsayers. I have come to the conclusion that the only certainty pertaining to future forecasts is that they will be wrong 100 percent of the time.

The District of Columbia Public Service Commission (PSC) has rejected a proposal by Potomac Electric Power Co. calling for rate recovery of lost revenues associated with demand-side management (DSM) activities.

The District of Columbia Public Service Commission (PSC)

has allowed Potomac Electric Power Co. rate recovery of costs associated with the development of electric vehicles for fleet use under alternate-fuel vehicle requirements imposed under the Energy Policy Act of 1992. The PSC rejected a request by the Greater Washington Petroleum Committee, an oil industry trade group, to deny funding because electric vehicle technology had not evolved to a point that promotes consumer acceptance of a competitively priced vehicle.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has upheld parts of a decision by the District of Columbia Public Service Commission (PSC) disallowing 25 percent of actual and projected

demand-side management (DSM) costs claimed by Potomac Electric Power Co. in a recent rate case. While agreeing that Potomac had failed to justify 100-percent recovery of its DSM costs, the court remanded the case to the PSC for a better explanation of why 25 percent represents an appropriate amount for the disallowance.