Commission Watch
What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.
While the electric utility industry has largely agreed on what elements to include in a standard market design (SMD) to govern wholesale power trading in a given region, recent experience shows that the regulators from time to time have overlooked a number of things.
FERC may have to carve out a special set of rules if it wants to bring Arctic gas south to the lower-48.
Doubts intensify over New England’s radical new market for electric capacity.
Should transmission owners get paid extra for distance and voltage?
Commission Watch: Be careful what you wish for.
Commission Watch
The AGs' Global Warming Suits:
A recent lawsuit filed by eight state attorneys general will take the industry to the place where bad policy meets with bad economics.
Commission Watch
IOUs, RTOs duke it out over standardization.
Have regional transmission operators (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) asked for excessive levels of credit from customers, to the extent that the burdensome requirements foreclose full market participation by competitive entities? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must face that difficult question as it investigates whether to institute a rulemaking on credit-related issues for service provided by ISOs, RTOs, and transmission providers.
Commission Watch
Assimilating the best of the regulated-utility and merchant models.
Vertically integrated utilities (VIUs) have served us well and do not need to be dismantled in the name of competition.
Commission Watch
Incentive regulation is not a cure-all for the continuing controversy over return on equity.
Regulated utilities are all too familiar with the contentious disputes that surround how the allowed return on equity (ROE) is set in a traditional cost-of-service setting. These disputes, which are reappearing as numerous utility rate-stabilization plans signed as part of deregulation come to an end, are likely to hinge, as always, on the riskiness of utility operating environments.
Commission Watch
CPUC questioned historic oversight authority.
To guarantee the continued growth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) importation and use in the United States, the energy industry needs to pay close attention to govern the regulation, siting, and operation of LNG import terminals-issues traditionally overseen by the federal government.