Let's look back over the past few years-what we got right and where we went wrong.

Do you recall how you felt at your last class reunion? Well, that's exactly what an editor feels when asked to reminisce in public about days gone by at the magazine to which he gave his best years.

BYLINE

As a former independent power producer, George Lagassa is sympathetic to the woes of the merchant power industry. Until just a few years ago, he held the license to a micro-hydro qualifying facility (QF) in New Hampshire, so he understands what it takes to compete in a regulated-franchise industry. Yet, as the principal of Mainstream Appraisals in North Hampton, N.H., Lagassa is also a dedicated pragmatist. He sees the industry's consolidation trend as a sort of correction in the U.S. power market.

Technology Corridor

Utilities are finding strategic benefits in demand-based metering technologies.

It's been years since utilities regarded customers as mere check-writing extensions of their meters. In fact, utilities' information technology focus during the past decade has centered on gaining greater control over customer information. The objective: Focus on-and fill-customer needs. The results are everywhere:

Frontlines

Is FERC the rightful heir?

The possibility that energy legislation drafted last year won't pass in 2004 has created a power vacuum. Who now is czar of electric utility reliability? Language in the proposed bill would have answered that question. But when Congress demurred, did that imply an endorsement of the ?

Commission Watch

Feds seek plug-and-play for distributed generation, but utilities want the power to stay local.

Pity the poor Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). With its market crusade out of favor, and transmission reform suddenly suspect after the Aug. 14 blackout, it could use a new agenda.

Business & Money

Wall Street bankers say utilities are not effectively telling their story.

How to mitigate transmission risk before the next big blackout.

By now there has been much industry analysis and finger-pointing over what happened on Aug. 14. Will we get a definitive answer to why the lights went out in the Northeast, Midwest, and Canada? Even after we've identified all the causal factors, the most important question to be asking ourselves as an industry is, Why?

The grid does not need a Marshall Plan for new investment.

We don't know what caused the Aug. 14 blackout, but somehow we know that our transmission system needs $50 billion to $100 billion in investment and upgrades. And utilities need higher returns to raise that kind of money. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.

The reality is that we aren't short $50 billion or $100 billion in our transmission system. The study said to support that proposition just doesn't do the job.

How to benchmark return on equity (ROE) and depreciation expense in utility rate cases.

 

We ask merchant grid developers if anything can ever be done.

 

The blackout of August 2003 should have come as no surprise. The Department of Energy's May 2002 National Transmission Grid Study finds growing evidence that the U.S. transmission system is in urgent need of modernization.