When utilities evaluate business process outsourcing, they need to determine which processes are most advantageous to outsource—core or non-core? Rather than debating the merits of core or non-core, perhaps the more critical questions utilities should ask are: How are our key processes performing? Are they cost-efficient and effective? Do they enhance or inhibit our corporate performance?

Technology Corridor

Power-Plant Cooling

EPA flounders on the Clean Water rule, while producers tackle the real enemy-shortage.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that a typical sport fisherman working the Great Lakes would pay $4.58 for the privilege of catching a single walleye/pike, but would gladly fork over $7.99 to land a trout, or as much as $11.19 for a salmon.

LDCs:

The consequences of short-sighted rate making.

Commission Watch

What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.

While the electric utility industry has largely agreed on what elements to include in a standard market design (SMD) to govern wholesale power trading in a given region, recent experience shows that the regulators from time to time have overlooked a number of things.

AN EXPENSIVE EXPERIMENT?

Dollars and Sense

Financial data raises doubts about whether deregulation benefits outweigh costs.

This year, U.S. electricity consumers will spend more than $1 billion financing the operation of six regional transmission organizations (RTOs).¹ RTO costs have nearly doubled since 2001 and now outweigh nearly all of the benefits anticipated by the national cost-benefit studies.

Let's look back over the past few years-what we got right and where we went wrong.

Do you recall how you felt at your last class reunion? Well, that's exactly what an editor feels when asked to reminisce in public about days gone by at the magazine to which he gave his best years.

How the wind farm capacity factor and a tax subsidy can beef up a utility's bottom line.

Many interested by a profit motive or an environmental motive wax eloquently about the economy of wind farms to generate electricity, since wind energy is an environmentally friendly source of energy or "green power." Thus, the interest in wind farms attracts the attention of citizens, environmental groups, politicians, and commercial companies.

Some big utilities are looking to get bigger.

When Morgan Stanley last October asked 30 of the top 50 utility chiefs whether they expected to merge with another company in the next two years, two-thirds of them said they did. Asked whether they expected to merge within the next five years, the utility chiefs unanimously said yes.

Retail Energy in 2002: A Regulatory About-face

 

 

State regulators redouble their deregulation efforts-or abandon them altogether.

The past year was a phenomenal one for state public utility regulators.

A historical confluence of events, including the catastrophic failure of the move to deregulate California electric markets and a nationwide epidemic of corporate financial scandals, led in large part by energy trading firms, helps to explain the developments.

Who should have "green tag" ownership under power purchase agreements, the buyers or the sellers?

A legal controversy is brewing in the electric industry over who should reap the financial benefits of the green characteristics of power plants, under existing power purchase agreements (PPA).