Financial players and load-serving utilities are looking for power asset deals.

Despite talk of wide bid-ask spreads in the past two tumultuous years, some 60 sales of generation assets have been announced. These sales cover more than 22 GW of capacity, valued on a cash-and-debt basis at approximately $11 billion. A wide variety of buyers and sellers have participated in the sales activity, with a pronounced entry by financial players (investment banks and private equity firms) and load-serving entities (LSEs) looking for capacity to serve their load.

People

New Oportunities:

Philip Carroll Jr. returned to ScottishPower as a non-executive director. According to the Comtex News Network, Carroll left ScottishPower earlier in 2003 to assist with the rebuilding of infrastructure in post-war Iraq.

Chesapeake Utilities hired Joe Steinmetz as its director of Internal Audit. Steinmetz served in the same position with Dover Downs Gaming & Entertainment Inc. and Dover Motorsports Inc. from 2001 to 2003 before being promoted to assisted controller.

Chief tech officers discuss how they are using their data to beat the competitition.

 

This year's first IT commandment: Use what you've got. And the second is like unto it: Data is king. Those are the strong themes that emerged from this year's CIO Forum. Fortnightly interviewed three chief information officers at three diverse companies: a traditional utility, Cinergy; a merchant generator, Calpine; and an independent system operator (ISO), the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

New Positions:

The Allegheny Energy Inc. board of directors named Florida Power & Light Co. President Paul Evanson its new chairman, replacing the retiring Alan J. Noia. Allegheny's interim president, Jay Pifer, assumed the duties of COO at Allegheny. Evanson had been with Florida Power and Light since 1992. He will be replaced temporarily by Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of FPL Group, until a permanent replacement is found.

 

Rising gas prices spark a rush to wind farms, straining grid capacity and raising larger issues about market design.

When the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) was drafting rules to encourage the use of renewable energy, it took pains to guard against the chance that power producers would fail to reach the state's target of 400 megawatts (MW) in installed new renewable generation capacity by Jan. 1, 2002. The commission needn't have worried.

Texas wins raves from the big players for its rules and systems, but the small consumer, as in other states, sees little reason to switch.

Six months into the opening of the restructured Texas electric market, industry players are generally pleased with the results, but the jury is still out, as the state's vaunted system design has shown some cracks, and consumers still see little reason to switch their energy supplier.

 

News Analysis

 

And in Texas, all customer information flows through ERCOT.

 

Texas thinks it has the right formula for retail choice.

When queried on the wisdom of its restructuring plan relative to California's restructuring woes, Texas likes to point to the new generation capacity coming online, and a supply-demand balance much more favorable than California's.

News Analysis

 

And in Texas, all customer information flows through ERCOT.

Texas thinks it has the right formula for retail choice.

 

News Digest

 

How does each region manage congestion, allocate losses and dispatch resources? Which players gain the most from each approach?

The United States now has six independent system operators, five approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and one approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. These ISOs present an astonishing array of similar and conflicting rules and philosophies by which transmission services are defined and priced.

This article aims to explain some of the key similarities and differences among the ISOs' transmission pricing schemes.