Law & Lawyers

Commission Watch: Grid Battle Is Joined

FERC's AEP ruling begs the question: Can the feds bypass states that block transmission reform?

A recent ruling puts the question squarely on the table: Can FERC overturn orders issued by the state public utility commissions that otherwise would stand in the way of its vision of regional transmission organizations with a standard market design?

Byline:

Lori A. Burkhart and Bruce W. Radford

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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.

Byline:

Edward N. Krapels

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Power Outages: A Tale of Two CIS Systems

What made BG&E's system more reliable than Pepco's?

Reliability and customer information systems (CIS) are rarely mentioned in the same breath. But in the wake of Hurricane Isabel last fall, the CIS at Baltimore Gas and Electric gets kudos for helping the utility keep on top of a widespread outage.

Byline:

Jennifer Alvey

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FERC Throws Down The Gauntlet

The legal battle of the century is ready to begin.

A FERC order late last year — that AEP must join the PJM grid to meet conditions of its 2000 merger with Central and Southwest Corp. — was tantamount to a declaration of war with state regulators. At the center of the issue is whether FERC has authority to pre-empt the states on development of regional transmission organizations.

Byline:

Richard Stavros

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