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Strategy & Planning

What if Elasticity is Changing?

New Risk for Electricity Sellers and Investors

A downward shift in peak usage may mean a beginning change in elasticity of demand. A more rapid and pronounced downshift in peak demand might suggest a less robust utility franchise value.
Byline: 

Leonard Hyman and William Tilles

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Helping Legislators Understand and Manage Utility Risks

Performance, Political, Customer Expectation, and Fiscal Risk

It is important to help legislators and regulators understand the utility's risk management decisions so that they can approve of the company's risk management strategies. Legislators and regulators are accustomed to thinking in terms of insuring against failures.
Byline: 

Kansas Representative Tom Sloan

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Investing in Innovation

Utilities Scaling-Up

Innovation success will require that utilities build distinct internal capabilities combined with parallel, directed future investment. However, they will supplement this activity simultaneously with external leverage through venture capitalists, start-ups, OEMs, partners and acquisitions. This formula is already being followed by a number of companies that have been leading the sector in formalizing innovation as a capability.
Byline: 

Tom Flaherty

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Nuclear Energy's Critical Illness

Continue With Failed Treatments or Pursue the Cure?

Many supporters of nuclear technology have tried to correct significant challenges on assorted issues from the public, the media, and the scientific, regulatory and political sectors. But these efforts failed; they could not acknowledge the true illness and pursue the cure. This discussion focuses on what that illness is, how the industry has treated it, how to cure it, and one way to achieve a new political and regulatory environment that can save the patient.
Byline: 

Charles Pennington and Jeffry Siegel

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Surprising Energy Requirements of the Cannabis Industry

Part I: Implications for Utilities, Regulators

The legal cannabis industry in the U.S. is experiencing rapid growth. That growth and its commensurate energy demands are placing strains on some individual utilities and local grids. In Part I, we forecast electricity demands, analyze problems resulting from the immense energy requirements, and assess some potential implications for the cannabis industry and for utilities.
Byline: 

Roger Bezdek, Michael Harshfield, Sean Tegart, Ujjval Vyas

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Nuclear Innovation Is Not an Oxymoron

EPRI Podcast: Advanced Nuclear Looks Promising

Advanced nuclear technologies are closer to reality than you might think. To make a breakthrough, they'll need to provide significant advantages over current technologies, such as operating at low pressures and very high temperatures, and including inherent safety features.
Byline: 

Aimee Mills with Tina Taylor, Andrew Sowder, and Shane Johnson

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Perpetuating the California Dream

Leadership Lyceum Podcast: A conversation with Edison International CEO Pedro Pizarro

Edison International is the publicly traded holding company for Southern California Edison, the regulated utility, and a small array of non-regulated investments, plus Edison Energy. At $11.5 billion in annual revenue, and serving 15 million customers, the company is one of the largest utilities in the country.
Byline: 

Pedro Pizarro, with Tom Linquist

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Energy People: Arshad Mansoor

We talked with Arshad Mansoor, Senior Vice President, Research and Development for the Electric Power Research Institute

Arshad Mansoor is responsible for EPRI's portfolio of R&D and demonstration programs. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is a member of the board of The Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) at UNC Charlotte.
Byline: 

Arshad Mansoor, with Steve Mitnick

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Utility's Role in Electricity's Future, Part II

Utility Execs Roundtable: We continued the conversation with execs from seven utilities in the Northeast who help lead their companies on future strategies

In part II of our roundtable, we discuss how new products and services are expected to create new revenue streams for utilities, augmenting the (slowly) declining traditional revenue.
Byline: 

Navigant and Public Utilities Fortnightly

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Why Innovation?

Also, What, Who, Where, When?

Why is innovation all the rage? Yes, continual improvement always makes sense. But the dramatic changes being talked about, are they that urgent? Let's recognize how much customers vary in their electricity wants and needs, within service territories, between territories, and between states.
Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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