Law & Lawyers

Investing in Innovation

Utilities Scaling-Up

Innovation success will require that utilities build distinct internal capabilities combined with parallel, directed future investment. However, they will supplement this activity simultaneously with external leverage through venture capitalists, start-ups, OEMs, partners and acquisitions. This formula is already being followed by a number of companies that have been leading the sector in formalizing innovation as a capability.
Byline: 

Tom Flaherty

Read Entire Article

Helping Legislators Understand and Manage Utility Risks

Performance, Political, Customer Expectation, and Fiscal Risk

It is important to help legislators and regulators understand the utility's risk management decisions so that they can approve of the company's risk management strategies. Legislators and regulators are accustomed to thinking in terms of insuring against failures.
Byline: 

Kansas Representative Tom Sloan

Read Entire Article

Why Are We Still Arguing About NEM?

Competitive Market Will Take Care of Next Burning Issue

I do not understand why we are still distracted by Net Energy Metering (NEM). It worked well when we had not-so-smart meters and were trying to encourage rooftop solar penetration. People in general and students of regulation in particular are left confused and can easily find some support for both sides. This results in conflicts and proposed compromises that keep the debate going at full tilt. Two things are missing or mostly overlooked in all this regulatory discourse.
Byline: 

Charles Cicchetti

Read Entire Article

Toshiba Exit Transforms Nuclear Market

Maybe a U.S. Nuclear Revival

Toshiba recently announced that financial write-offs related to its troubled nuclear division, Westinghouse Electric, would total about $6.2 billion dollars. Since the write-off announcements, Toshiba's stock price has been cut in half. Toshiba's financial collapse changes the face of the nuclear industry.
Byline: 

Leonard Hyman and Bill Tilles

Read Entire Article

Blockchain is Coming!

A Future of Distributed Ledgers

Blockchain is a distributed system of electronic ledgers that provide automatic, instant cross-verification of transactions. With it, bitcoin offered an unsurpassed degree of reliability. Perhaps you think utilities can just wait and adopt bitcoin or cyber-whatever later. But anticipation and precautionary actions are the best course in the face of uncertainty.
Byline: 

Roger Woodworth

Read Entire Article

Energy Efficiency: Where We Are Now

Building the Infrastructure

With its roots in the 1970s conservation movement, energy efficiency has grown into a thriving industry today - one that employs many and provides benefits to utilities, consumers, the economy and society in general. According to a recently released report, energy efficiency accounts for about three out of every four American clean energy jobs.
Byline: 

John Hargrove, Michael Mernick, Michael Volker, Sara Conzemius

Read Entire Article

Open, Standard, Direct-Access Communications Interfaces

Why They Matter

There is impressive growth in the types of devices that could play a part in utility and aggregator programs to provide grid support. But there are stranded investment risks if utilities, manufacturers, and consumers make communications interface choices that are not open, standard, and supportive of direct access.
Byline: 

Christine Hertzog and Brian Seal

Read Entire Article

'Markets' Test

We Called Them 'Markets.' Now We're Testing Them.

We're enamored of free markets, particularly in the nineties. But power markets cannot come close to emulating authentic competition. Why? They cannot satisfy the basic conditions of competition taught in microeconomics 101.
Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

Read Entire Article

Water Dreaming

Risk vs. Advantage

The water utility industry was featured at the recent NARUC meeting in Washington. It reminded me of a period in the 1990s when interest in investment in the water utility industry was high globally and in the U.S.
Byline: 

Branko Terzic

Read Entire Article

The Lincoln Leader

Leadership Lyceum Podcast: A Conversation with WEC Energy Group President and CEO Allen Leverett

Allen Leverett was appointed President and CEO of WEC Energy Group in May 2016. As one of the youngest CEOs of investor-owned utilities, Leverett brings verve to industry leadership, but also a deep respect for the past. WEC Energy Group is one of the nation's premier energy companies, serving 4.4 million customers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.
Byline: 

Allen Leverett, with Tom Linquist

Read Entire Article