Transmission & ISOs
FERC Docket No. ER97-1523-040, filed April 18, 2000.
Ajay Gupta is an attorney and economist and currently a senior associate in the San Francisco office of Analysis Group/Economics, a consulting firm. Previously, he practiced corporate law in the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he specialized in securities offerings, energy, and petrochemical project finance transactions and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. He can be reached at agupta@ag-inc.com.
Telecoms may offer IOUs a model for multiplying market caps by dividing their shareholdings.
April 1, 2000
Ruth K. Kretschmer; C. Clark Leone; Jose A. Rotger
"Sensible Approach" or Misguided Meddling?
The proposal by Reps. Franks and Meehan to sell federal power at market rates provokes conflicting responses from readers.
I am writing in response to an article written by Reps. Franks and Meehan entitled, "The Sensible Approach: Federal Power at Market Rates," published in the Nov. 1, 1999 edition of Public Utilities Fortnightly (see pp. 44-47). I agree that it is outrageous that electricity services for people in the Northwest are subsidized (regardless of the customers' ability to pay) by the rest of the people in this country.
Mergers & Acquisitions
NSP + New Century. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission OK'd the merger of Northern States Power Co. (NSP) and New Century Energies Inc. (NCE), to form Xcel Energy Inc., on condition that the new company would join the Midwest Independent System Operator. FERC Docket No. EC99-101- 000, Jan. 12, 2000, 90 FERC ¶61,020.
* Rate Pancaking. The FERC found no problem with transmission rate pancaking with the MISO condition, even though NCE subsidiary Southwestern Public Service Co. (SPS) belongs to the rival Southwest Power Pool.
Trevor R. Roycroft, Ph.D.
In fending off the special interests, Congress spawned new inequities.
The fourth anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 most likely will be celebrated with more groans than cheers. The law set out to create "a pro-competitive, deregulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced telecommunications and information services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition,"[Fn.1] but that objective has not been fulfilled.
Bruce W. Radford
State regulators turn to telecom to salvage the clout they've lost in energy.
State public utility commissions now seem to spend more time on telecommunications than electricity or natural gas. That's their new power base. The telephone local loop marks the one place where state regulators still have clout.
To test that notion, let's see who attended last month's annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, held in San Antonio. By my count, out of the first 500 registered attendees, over 120 (24 percent) came from telecommunications firms.
Anne S. Babineau, William E. Taylor, and Matthew M. Weisman
What the Supreme Court thinks about handicapping the incumbent to level the field for new players.
Regulators today sit on the horns of a dilemma: How far to level the field in the name of competition?
If regulators fear market power in the incumbent utility, and so impose restrictions on its activities and assets, they may impair its effectiveness and thus distort the very competition they attempt to foster.
State PUCs
Gas Appliance Repair.
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