Frontlines & Op-Ed

Bullish for Business

Forced consolidation of RTOs would set transmission owners free to go after profits.

Forced consolidation of RTOs would set transmission owners free to go after profits.

Izzbee, Izz it?

The Energy Industry Standards Board doesn't exist yet, but it's got regulators talking.

More than two years ago, I suggested in this column that regional independent system operators would likely supplant the regional reliability councils as the caretakers of electric system reliability. And that's still possible—if the ISOs move quickly to RTO status, and if the RTOs get cracking right away on adopting uniform business rules. But the FERC may get tired waiting for that to happen.

The Grid Is Dead

Gas pipelines compete against electric transmission lines. And the pipes are winning.

Years from now, we'll look back on the power crisis as the beginning of the end of electric transmission.

Frontlines

How to price energy during a stage 3 alert?

Frontlines

Très Riches Heures

 

How to price energy during a stage 3 alert?

You know the painting. Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. You probably saw it first in Janson's "History of Art", in a college survey course.

Frontlines

The Power Exchange will hunt you down.

(1) the regulatory rate freeze imposed under the state's restructuring scheme,

(2) the state-imposed duty to serve that forced Edison to supply electricity to retail customers regardless of price, and

(3) the Jan. 4 order by the state public utility commission that Edison said barred it from obtaining funds to meet its payment obligations to the PX.

Entergy's Grid Grab

Will tomorrow's transmission be privately funded, with the first-class seats reserved for investors?

The six o'clock news has locked its radar on California's power market meltdown, and rightly so. But that's no reason to overlook the nation's heartland, where a utility coming late to the game has set the pot boiling.

Jules Verne's Grid?

With undersea cable linking Canada to Manhattan, Project Neptune could remake the transmission biz.

With undersea cable linking Canada to Manhattan, Project Neptune could remake the transmission biz.