Retail Risk-Based Pricing
A new approach to rate design.
Customers with greater risk require greater working capital set-asides to address anomalous or unexpected events.
Perspective
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.
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?
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.
Perspective
Two Cato analysts suggest a return to the past-vertical integration, but now with no state regulators.
Perspective
Two Cato analysts suggest a return to the past-vertical integration, but now with no state regulators.
The defeat of the energy bill in the Senate last year has thrown electricity restructuring back on its heels. There clearly is no consensus among politicians or academics regarding how this industry ought to be organized or how it might best be regulated. Finding our way out of this morass requires a reconsideration of how we got to this dismal point in our regulatory journey.
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?
Climate Change: The Heat Is On
From reporting to trading, utilities try to meet new expectations.
Implementing a strategy on climate change is a new sign of corporate responsibility, and utilities are responding in a variety of ways.
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.
Trading Spaces? Will CFTC Move Into FERC's House?
Will the CFTC move Into FERC's house?
As the law is written, PJM looks like a commodity futures exchange.