PPA

Demand-Side Dreams

FERC would relax price caps—sending rates skyward—to encourage customers to curtail loads.

About four months ago, at a conference at Stanford University’s Center for International Development, the economist and utility industry expert Frank Wolak turned heads with a not-so-new but very outrageous idea.

People

(September 2007) DPL Inc. promoted Bryce Nickel to vice president of transmission and distribution operations. DPL also announced the promotion of Kevin Hall to director, transmission and distribution engineering. MDU Resources Group Inc. promoted Cynthia J. Norland, assistant vice president of administration, to vice president of administration. Portland General Electric Co. named Jay Dudley vice president, general counsel, and compliance officer. And others...

Nuclear vs. IGCC

Next-gen technologies race to dominate the big build.

New nuke plants will take at least eight years to complete, while the coal that powers new IGCC plants is no longer cheap. Regulatory and market obstacles confront both technologies, just as they emerge from the starting gate. Which type of plant will win the future?

Wind Goes Hollywood

The spotlight is on. But true stardom will require more direction from utilities.

Wind has become today’s hit—a potential blockbuster, even—but still needing that one big break. To make it big, utilities will have to lead the charge as owners. That will force utilities to consider and evaluate the significant credit implications that can arise when signing a power purchase agreement with developers that lack deep pockets, or implement fly- by-night schemes.

Clean Air Rules: A New Roadmap for the Power Sector

How new market-based regulations fit with today’s programs.

What do the Clean Air Interstate Rule, the Clean Air Mercury Rule, and the Clean Air Visibility Rule require of the power sector? Authors from the Environmental Protection Agency review implementation progress.

Where Have All the Mergers Gone?

EPACT and the repeal of PUHCA have not affected the pace of utility acquisitions.

Why do we still have several hundred shareholder-owned electric utilities in the United States, not to mention several thousand municipal and cooperative ones?

Letters to the Editor

John D. Chandley, Principal, LECG LLC: Bruce Radford’s “An Inconvenient Fact” provides a helpful critique of a fundamental element of open-access transmission reform, one of the most important rulemaking cases affecting electricity regulation at FERC.

Cynthia Bogorad, Spiegel & McDiarmid, Washington: From my perspective representing transmission-dependent utilities, I am very sympathetic to the underlying concerns that appear to be driving the TDAs’ proposal. However, the TDAs’ proposal is not the answer.

Watch the Cycle

Can the upward swing in global power infrastructure investment be sustained?

The current recovery in global power-sector investment is being driven not only by rising demand for power, but also by the huge levels of liquidity in global financial markets. How long will the current up-cycle last?

The Rush to Reliability

FERC races to impose NERC’s new rules, raising howls of protest in the process.

After pleading with Congress for so many years, and then at last winning the requisite legislative authority to impose mandatory and enforceable standards for electric reliability, to replace its legacy system of voluntary compliance, NERC finds itself at a curious juncture. It wants to slow the transition.

Letters to the Editor

Jay Kumar, President, Economic & Technical Consultants Inc.: Could Hind Farag and Gary L. Hunt point out any winner whose power costs have decreased after the implementation of LMP? I can bet they won’t find even one single (real) entity. ... I am glad that MISO is sticking to the original basis of a supposedly competitive market.

Diane Moody, Director, Statistical Analysis, American Public Power Association: “The Fallacy of High Prices” purports to show that restructuring of wholesale power markets has resulted in significant benefits. However, the analysis it offers in support of this proposition is not credible.