[BETA] Fortnightly

(January 2013) Entergy acquires Kgen gas-fired plants in Arkansas and Mississippi; TransCanada buys BP share of Alberta gas storage facility; PSE acquires Tenaska plant; AEP issues $850 million in debt; Duke units float $650 million in bonds; plus debt issues by NextEra, Southern Company, Entergy, and others totaling nearly $3.2 billion.

(May 2012) Entergy Louisiana starts construction on gas-fired power project; Virginia Commonwealth University and Dominion partner on a test site for efficient energy technologies; Burlington Electric Department selects Siemens for meter data management platform; IKEA commissions four Blink electric vehicle charging stations; Edison Mission Energy, TIAA-CREF and Cook Inlet Region Inc. form partnership, and others.

(July 2010) Constellation promotes Maria Korsnick to Chief Nuclear Officer; Chip Pardee becomes Exelon’s COO; plus executive changes at American Transmission, Entergy, Idaho Power, New Jersey Resources, Northwestern Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, Pinnacle West, Spectra Energy, TVA, Williams, EPRI and more...

(May 2009) AGL Resources created a new office of technology and environmental sustainability, to be headed by Ira Pearl as v.p. Jay Sutton is promoted to v.p., engineering and supply chain services at AGL’s Florida City Gas and coastal Georgia subsidiaries. Melvin Williams is promoted to general manager, Florida City Gas and coastal Georgia. And others...

Originally developed to compensate U.S. electric utilities for regulatory assets rendered uneconomic by deregulation, so-called “stranded-cost” securitization techniques are finding new applications. To date, utilities have issued approximately $40 billion of stranded-cost securitizations. That number could increase dramatically if the industry applies well-tested securitization techniques to the extraordinary costs it faces in the future.

(August 2008) Luminant (the former TXU power generation unit) announced that Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson joined the company as senior vice president of public affairs. NiSource named Stephen P. Smith CFO. AEP named Richard E. Munczinski senior vice president, shared services. And more...

“I think it is my job as a leader to make sure that our values are always lived up to even when [they] conflict necessarily with our vision. That is what people look for at the end of the day. A leader’s role above all else is to make sure the truth is respected.”

By 2020, nearly half the workforce will be female and non-white. Are utilities ready?

Utilities, like other businesses, understand that-moral and ethical imperatives aside-a diverse workforce makes their businesses stronger. But at a recent transmission conference in Washington, D.C., the 50-or-so attendees were mostly male (two of the four women in the room were conference organizers), mostly white (two blacks and three or four Asians), and mostly older (half had gray hair).