Like it or not, changes are coming for electric cooperatives. Fewer and bigger might be the inevitable result.
Michael T. Burr
Like it or not, changes are coming for electric cooperatives. Fewer and bigger might be the inevitable result.
When power planners at Basin Electric Power Cooperative began trying to decide how and where the company's next big power plant would be built, they did what a co-op does best -they reached out and formed a coalition.
Feds seek plug-and-play for distributed generation, but utilities want the power to stay local.
Bruce W. Radford
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.
Is FERC overstepping its jurisdiction and attempting to force a standard into a one-size-fits-all category?
Stan Blazewicz and Eugene Shlatz
On the virtues and vices of ICAP, ACAP, FTRs, hubs, flowgates, DAMs, and gaming.
Bruce W. Radford
Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ... Special Report ...
FERC Docket No. EL01-38-000, filed Feb. 14, 2001
Bruce W. Radford
How 165 lawyers were mostly on the wrong side in the biggest electric merger to date.
With Warren Buffet buying up MidAmerican Energy as his own personal utility, and Bill Gates taking a stake in Avista, the standard electric merger starts to look tame.
For that and other reasons, I believe it's all but certain that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will soon OK the electric industry's biggest-ever merger, combining American Electric Power Co. with Central and South West Corp.
They see utilities responding, but fear outlying areas are overlooked.
Despite reports of year 2000-readiness from virtually all electric utilities, and a promise from the U.S. Department of Energy to pressure the laggards, some customers still fear being left in the dark on Jan. 1, 2000. That view may surprise some, but it emerged clearly from the conference held in Chicago August 5-6 by the North American Electric Reliability Council, to update utilities and their customers on electric industry progress in Y2K problem mitigation.
Co-ops beat utility rates in 15 states. But why not more?
Despite the fact that their customers are scattered throughout the most remote reaches of the 46 U.S. states they service, electrical cooperatives in 15 states offer residential rates lower than the averages for all utilities in those states.
A comparison of 1997 rates by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association finds that another 24 states have rates that are just 1 to 10 percent higher than the utilities' state averages.
Mary L. Schapiro, president and member of the board of the National Association of Securities Dealers Regulation Inc., or NASDR, was appointed to the Cinergy Corp. board of directors. Schapiro will fill the vacancy resulting from the retirement of Van P. Smith, chairman of Ontario Corp.
U.K. electricity regulator OFFER (Office of Electricity Regulation) appointed Brian Saunders, Ph.D., a member of the Electricity Pool, to head the Department of Trade and Industry/OFFER team to reform electricity trading.
Bruce W. Radford
As utility takeovers break new ground, the FERC ponders proposed rules, perhaps already out of date.
A year ago, when U.S. Antitrust Czar Joel Klein talked of a "window of opportunity" for electric utility mergers, he didn't predict when it would close.
And it hasn't yet.
In the 12 months leading up to January 1998, when Klein had addressed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission through its "Distinguished Speakers" series, only the ill-timed Primergy deal had been turned down. The next year, 1998, would prove no different.
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