PPL CEO Interviewed
We went to Allentown and talked with Bill Spence.
What are the most exciting things happening at PPL? What were the biggest challenges in that journey? Were there some tough challenges you had to get through?
Strategy & Planning
We Made Light Free
As inexpensive as lighting was, twenty years ago, we’ve since made it close to free. Too cheap to meter?
Will lighting drop to a tenth of residential consumption, then below? Every use of a machine, appliance, device shrunk in its significance to the household budget.
Technological Innovation and Public Policy-Making
The new grid will be driven by opportunities for electric utilities and customers to monetize their economic opportunities.
Policy-maker’s perspective: It's important to permit utilities to become more efficient and develop alternative revenue streams.
Schneiderman Targets Peabody Energy
Shareholder Protection or War on Coal?
Why did Schneiderman sue Peabody? Because Peabody is America’s biggest coal company. He also likely wanted to establish a precedent before launching a Martin Act investigation of even bigger game: ExxonMobil.
Improving Performance in Publicly Owned Utilities
Consistently setting, measuring, and updating quantitative performance metrics should be a central feature of any program.
Modern performance-management practices can – and should – be applied to public and private utilities alike.
Utility Streetlighting Retrofits
Getting to “yes” with cities and neighborhoods.
Xcel Energy Colorado envisioned a straightforward plan: Street by street, city by city, in a logical progression over five years, they would replace High-Pressure Sodium streetlights with Light-Emitting Diode lamps. But that’s not what happened.
FERC Revises Market-Based Rate Procedures
Order 816 indicates the commission is scrutinizing the underlying calculations of market power analyses.
This revision could have significant impact on market power analyses of certain franchised utilities and affiliated MBR entities.
Community Solar
Answers to questions you were afraid to ask
Community solar is expected to jump fivefold. What exactly is it and how exactly does it work?
Solar Shines As Regulatory Battles Abound
A tough legal and financial terrain is confronting producers, utilities and regulators.
State commissions are challenged to find the sweet spot whereby utilities can afford to maintain their systems and homeowners are motivated to go green.
Electricity at War
Rumors tell of a cyber attack on the power grid.
Electricity in war today is akin to the railroads, dating from the Civil War: a high-value target. Every line of code is a land mine, waiting for hackers to detonate.