Capital Reserve Margins: Hardly Adequate
A pseudonymous executive tells why the CCRO's recommendations don't pass muster.
A pseudonymous executive explains why the CCRO’s recommendations on capital adequacy don’t pass muster.
Strategy & Planning
Back to the Ratebase
Utilities are absorbing distressed IPPs, and raising alarm bells in the process.
In 2003, just over 1.4 GW of unregulated generating capacity was converted into rate-based assets. At least another 5.6 GW will be converted soon. What supply procurement practices are appropriate in today’s power market?
Total Recall: Will Competition Be Back?
California anticipates changes in energy policy under its new governor.
The Schwarzenegger administration’s detailed implementation plan is expected by the spring of 2004. Schwarzenegger is committed to restoring confidence in government and improving the business climate, and at the same time taking steps to increase and diversify California’s energy supply and improve the environment.
Perspective: MISO, Markets, and Common Sense
Wisconsinites don't fear 'Day 2.' But let's get the grid rights right.
The cost of rushing into poorly designed LMP-based energy markets may far exceed any purported cost increases attributable to any future delayed start-up date for certain portions of the MISO region.
Integrating Coal and Wind
Strange bedfellows may provide a new supply option.
Joint coal-wind development is not a good greenhouse gas reduction strategy. If carbon limits are imposed on the U.S. electric sector at some future date, nuclear power may be the only viable option for satisfying the country's growing appetite for electricity.
Frontlines: Still More Blackouts?
Do-nothing regulators scare off investment, raising prospects for yet another large-scale power failure.
Let's hope the industry spends the money before Mother Nature throws her next pop quiz.
Larceny Debunked
Reliant comes clean on profits, says California picked its own pocket.
While the media made hay chiding power producers for gouging consumers for electricity generated from gas-fired turbines, California' s system of a single market-clearing price for electricity was "delivering immense windfalls" to utilities who had no need to buy gas at all to run the power plants they still owned (or controlled through affiliates).
Wind Power, Poised for Take Off?
A survey of projects and economics.
An industry advocate touts the recent rise of projects in the pipeline and forsees remarkable growth in wind farms over the next twenty years — more, perhaps, than others would concede.
It Ain't Over...'Til It's over: Retail Choice is Working, Despite the Wait for Real Competition
A case study from Maryland on electric restructuring.
A local utility exec admits that Maryland has no truly competitive power market, but claims customer choice is still a good thing.
Should Government Open the Books of the Merchant Gen Sector?
EIA Data Tracking
The EIA also wants to collect data — finances, operations, emissions, fuel consumption and costs — from non-utility generators. What’s the public interest here?