Transmission

Reinventing the Grid

How to find a future that works.

The traditional central-station grid is evolving toward a more distributed architecture, accommodating a variety of resources spread out across the network. An open and thoughtful planning approach will allow an orderly transition to an integrated system – while fostering innovation among a wider range of industry players.
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

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Invoice Enclosed

Having lost Entergy to MISO, the Southwest Power Pool seeks its pound of flesh.

Welcome to the age of RTO competition: region vs. region, grid vs. grid. It could well outdo the choice wars between retail energy suppliers that we thought were in our future.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Life in the Transco Age

The competitive transmission genie is out of the bottle.

FERC Orders 890 and 1000 have opened the doors to independent transcos, heralding an era of innovation to solve reliability and capacity problems.
Byline: 

Elliot Roseman, Ken Collison, and Kiran Kumaraswamy

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Bundled against Change

Mississippi draws a line in the sand.

"We view the [Entergy-ITC] transaction [as] an attempt to extract excess value."-Mississippi PSC
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Category Error

The trouble with treating grid projects as market players in New York’s capacity auction.

Transmission is not generation. Yet New York ISO makes grid projects qualify as competitive, like gen plants, to get to play in its capacity market.
Byline: 

Edward N. Krapels and William Hollaway

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Modeling Storm Outages

New tools for enhancing utility preparedness and response.

Sandy and other major storms have raised the bar for outage management. New modeling systems help utilities predict effects and plan their response.
Byline: 

Michael Beck, Seth Guikema, Ken Buckstaff, and Steven Quiring

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Cross-Border Bargaining

Interregional grid planning under FERC Order 1000.

Territorial fights emerge in the interregional transmission plans proposed for compliance with FERC Order 1000.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Walking the Ports and Services Gauntlet

An approach to complying with NERC’s new cybersecurity standard, CIP-007 (R2).

NERC’s new standards require utilities to lock down network ports and services. Compliance calls for a systematic approach to cataloging and tracking.

Byline: 

Chris Sincerbox

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Bargain or Bonanza

Is discounted cash flow (DCF) still a reliable tool for determining equity cost?

The time-honored discounted cash flow method for determining appropriate utility returns falls short when interest rates are low. Inadequate ROEs ultimately increase cost of capital and wipe away any temporary savings.
Byline: 

Carmen L. Gentile and Monica M. Berry

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Improving Capacity Markets

FERC decision on PJM mitigation is a model for other ISOs and RTOs.

Capacity markets have been a significant source of controversy since the inception of competitive wholesale markets. While there are many regulatory questions to be answered in constructing capacity markets, the primary goal of such markets should be to attract capacity that is competitively priced.

Byline: 

Rich Miller and Raghu Sudhakara

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