Will the deal with FPL serve the best interests of ratepayers?
Even as many hope that repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) will lead to more efficient and rational corporate structures, they also fear that repeal could foster irrational exuberance, with mergers that fail spectacularly. Maybe that explains why every new utility merger announcement is being met with a much higher level of scrutiny than in past decades.
(February 2006) Mirant announced that Robert M. Edgell would be appointed executive vice president and U.S. region head. The Southern California Edison board of directors elected James T. Reilly vice president of nuclear engineering and technical services for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. KeySpan Corp.’s board of directors appointed Stephen W. McKessy lead director. Richard C. (Dick) Kelly was elected chairman of Xcel Energy Inc.’s board of directors. And others...
Cooperation and coordination will help the United States avoid an energy-policy confrontation.
China is seeking to acquire resources and infrastructure from all over the world, from the oil fields of Venezuela to new shipyards for building liquefied natural gas tankers in Shanghai. But the country’s acquisition pattern puts it on a collision course with the United States and the rest of the world.
How to avoid the billions of dollars in costs that were disallowed during the last round of construction.
With nuclear energy again being viewed as part of the solution for the United States’ energy needs, a number of companies are starting the early permitting and licensing process. Meeting budget targets means the industry must address project-management issues and the risk of end-of-project disallowances for any company or regulator to be able to move forward with new construction.
Here’s what’s driving the renaissance.
Nine companies, consortia, or joint ventures are planning approximately 12 new nuclear power plants in the United States. How do the business challenges they face differ from the challenges faced by companies using other fuel sources?
Budgets are expected to increase, even as new IT challenges present themselves.
In our annual technology forum, we talk with tech/information specialists at four companies: Patricia Lawicki at PG&E; Ken Fell at the New York ISO; Mark C. Williamson at American Transmission Co.; and John Seral at GE Energy.
FERC this year must select a reliability czar. But the obvious choice could prove less than ideal.
NERC up until now has been, in its own words, “a self regulatory organization, relying on reciprocity, peer pressure, and the mutual self-interest of all those involved in the electric system.” Nevertheless, can this tradition of kind, gentle, and voluntary consensus-building stand NERC in good stead as it seeks to transform itself in to a steel-fisted czar that would enforce mandatory standards?
We must efficiently deliver wholesale power within competitive regional markets.
When President Eisenhower was growing up in Kansas, he saw America’s byways and back roads develop to meet point-to-point needs, eventually forming a loosely connected national interstate highway network. The U.S. electric transmission system has similar roots, and it needs a similar vision to meet the needs of the 21st century.
FERC says it won’t ‘change’ the native-load preference, but don’t bet on it.
When FERC opened wholesale power markets to competition a decade ago in Order No. 888, it codified a system for awarding grid access known as the pro forma Open-Access Transmission Tariff (OATT), founded on physical rights, and on the fiction that electrons travel along a “contract path.” Should the commission “tinker” with the OATT, making only surgical changes to make it current? Or, do events instead warrant a complete overhaul?
Jim Lundrigan, New Haven, Conn.: After reading Gordon van Welie’s article (“New England: A Critical Look at Competition,”) I couldn’t help but think back to California in 2000. Van Welie, who is president and CEO of ISO New England, is trying to feed the citizens of New England the same brand of malarkey that the California ISO fed the California Public Utilities Commission in 2000 when wholesale and retail prices in California were perfectly linked and nearly succeeded in bankrupting the wealthiest state in the country.
John S. Ferguson, Richardson, Texas: The article of Michael J. Majoros Jr. (“Rate-Base Cleansings: Rolling Over Ratepayers,”) attracted my attention, because I perceive it to propose a solution—PUCs’ need to recognize refundable regulatory liabilities—for a problem that does not exist.