Regulators today must define earnings for energy retailers virtually bereft of fixed assets.
Applying the traditional rate-base concept to the new hybrid companies is where the gap between the old and the new regulatory paradigms resembles a deep schism. The current shifts in regulation should cause regulators to revisit and reconsider concepts that once reigned supreme in ratemaking.
Utilities must trim the fat from excessive stock options, stock grants and executive pay.
This month’s cover story focuses on how utilities intend to find the talent they’ll need over the next few years to replace all those retiring baby boomers. And part of that puzzle naturally involves executive pay: how to attract the best and brightest without going overboard on rewards for performance.
Chairman and CEO, MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co.
“Leadership is the recognition that we are fiduciaries of the customer’s dollars and we have to be as efficient as we possibly can be because it is their money and not ours.”
Cal-ISO files a new market design, but has it traded efficiency for software?
Eyeing a launch date of November 2007, Cal-ISO at last has come forward with plans for revamping its widely disparaged wholesale market design. The formal proposal, known as the MRTU (Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade), was filed this past February at FERC.
How cutting-edge military technologies can help solve some of the industry’s most critical issues.
Whether it’s an aging workforce, the impact of competitive markets, or an outdated transmission system, today’s energy and utility organizations are facing a whole new set of challenges. What many people in the industry don’t realize is that the utility sector is not the first to face these kinds of issues. The U.S. military is dealing with, or has dealt with, a strikingly similar set of problems in recent years.
New technologies are helping windpower mature as a viable power supply choice for utilities.
Few people understand how to ride shifting winds better than Jim Dehlsen does. Dehlsen founded Zond Energy Systems 25 years ago, and steered the company through a series of major changes and challenges—the oil-price collapse of the 1980s; ambivalent energy policies, with on-again, off-again production tax credits; and the sale of controlling interests in Zond to Enron in the late 1990s. Should it come as any surprise, then, that Dehlsen still is bullish on windpower’s prospects?
Does the Clean Air Act require the agency to consider the most low-emission coal plant technologies in permitting new plants?
Why doesn’t its interpretation of the Clean Air Act consider the most low-emission coal plant technologies?
Does inappropriate market power explain the increase during late 2005?
Beginning around June 2005, prices in the PJM day-ahead locational market pricing energy markets and real-time pricing markets rose precipitously. Based on publicly available information, our study concludes that these price increases are not fully explained by higher loads and higher commodity fuel prices. Could higher energy prices be the result of the inappropriate exercise of market power rather than the appropriate result of market dynamics operating in the presence of scarcity?
Forget the mega merger as a means to acquire new power plants. FERC’s new rules may offer a better path.
Forget the mega merger as a means to acquire new power plants. FERC’s new rules may offer a better path.
Not in all cases, or for all stakeholders. Here’s why.
The industry perceives substantial benefits from consolidating. But what is the track record? Does the regulatory and strategic landscape suggest these mergers are beneficial?