Mercury Rising
How will the EPA's rulemaking affect U.S. energy markets?
EPA proposes a cap-and-trade program. How does that compare with a Maximum Achievable Control Technology standard?
Strategy & Planning
Generation Reserves: The Grid Security Question
A cost-benefit study shows the value of adding synchronized generating reserves to prevent blackouts on the scale of Aug.14.
A study reveals how increasing the availability and flexibility of generation resources is cheaper than adding transmission.
What's New at the Firewall
Utilities search for ways to combat viruses and spam.
Spam costs utilities hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, but the threat from spam quickly is becoming a security issue as well.
What Is a Power Plant Worth?
The consequences of exuberance are all around us.
Investors put $50 billion into new generating capacity because they expected that electricity restructuring would lead to the formation of a small number of effective, regional transmission organizations, which would make the location of a generating facility less important in the future. Based on that assumption, developers placed many plants close to a source of fuel, not close to market. For many companies, that has turned out to be a fatal mistake.
Letter to the Editor
The Kentucky PSC Chair takes issue with Richard Stavros' "AEP's Gutsy Gambit," Frontlines, November 2003.
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?
U.S. Gas Production: Can We Trust the Projections?
Government (EIA) forecasts suffer in credibility when compared with geologic assessments.
The EIA predicts that natural gas consumption will climb more than 60 percent percent over 20 years, driving U.S. production up 50-plus percent over the same period. How does that square with geologic assessments?