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Strategy & Planning

IT Roundtable: The Digitized Grid

Data gathering and controllability offer the quickest path to reliability.

Technology leaders at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative present their visions of energy IT in the 21st century.
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

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Merchant Power: Ratepayers Back At Risk

A review of power plant deals in 2004 shows that utilities are buying.

Whether evolution or devolution, the merchant deals done to date show movement to a familiar structure; ratepayers are back at risk. While ratepayers have benefitted from merchant plants, they also paid since competition began with PURPA in 1978, and many of the acquisitions put them at risk for future changes in power values and fuel costs.
Byline: 

Jeff Bodington

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Debilitating Doctrine

How the filed-rate policy wreaks havoc — and what courts can do about it.

Like many venerable legal rules, the filed-rate doctrine is rarely questioned. Over the last century, it has served many important purposes. However, with deregulated wholesale electric power markets at the federal level and various degrees of deregulation across the states, both the doctrine's continued applicability and usefulness are suspect.
Byline: 

Jim Rossi

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Power Measurements: Welcome to ComEd, Population 1,281

What did LMPs tell us this summer in PJM's new neighborhood?

With one summer under its belt as a member of PJM, ComEd has been called a complete success by some, boring by others. Using data from Energy Velocity's Market Ops and Weather products, we can see the impact of transmission and weather on ComEd this summer.
Byline: 

Aaron Brasket, Tom Ottem, and Mike McNair

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Comments on 'Solving the Crisis in Unscheduled Power'

Letters to the Editor

Robert Blohm's article, "Solving the Crisis in Unscheduled Power," ignores a significant part of the power-scheduling paradigm — that is, it ignores transmission. Every power schedule not only includes load and generation but also a path to move the electricity between those points.
Byline: 

Mark B. Lively

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Playing Russian Roulette

Moscow's ratification of the Kyoto protocol could pose problems for the United States.

It could mark the biggest bungle of the last two administrations: the decision to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol rather than stay and negotiate to U.S. advantage. No one thought Russia would sign and put the treaty in force. But now that Russia's ratification appears imminent, policy wonks in America are scrambling to assess the impact.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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Perspective: Don't Fence Me Out

Hard-and-fast ring-fencing rules are not the best way to maintain order in the partially deregulated utility sector.

In times of stress due to financial setbacks or pending merger issues, regulatory ring-fencing or internal company structural separation can serve a beneficial purpose. But beware! Predicting the future is an impossible task: Utility regulators should hesitate before putting policies in place today that limit managerial discretion in the future, based upon the belief that they possess that ability.
Byline: 

Steve Fetter

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The Growth Divide

Will a back-to-basics strategy meet investor expectations?

The debate over how utilities should honor their obligation to stockholders is an issue that is coming to the fore with greater force. But this time there seems to be quite a difference of opinion over strategy — or so we found in our annual finance issue.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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Outsourcing, Reliability, and IT: When will the Three Meet?

How to make sure your outsourcing partner works as an extension of your IT organization.

It is imperative that the CIS manager treats the outsourcing partner team as an extension of his own staff. Good working relationships between the client and the on-site partner team go a long way to ensure processes that provide reliability and security are adequately followed.
Byline: 

Rajiv Bahl

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