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New Opportunities: Dynegy Inc. announced that Carolyn M. Campbell has been named group general counsel-corporate finance & securities, and corporate secretary. Campbell joins Dynegy from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
Commission
Monopolists in Our Midst
What happens when economists and state regulators give up on electric restructuring?
It’s not to be taken lightly when several high-profile economists reverse themselves on electric competition—giving up on policies they had pushed for years. It’s also quite serious when regulators and legislators in pro-competitive states become willing to discuss a repeal of electric restructuring laws. These developments, seen over the fast few months, have set the industry buzzing.
Betting on Broadband
Are consumer broadband over powerline (BPL) services enough to make the business case for utilities?
After years of development, technology to deliver high-speed data over the existing electric power delivery network has emerged in the marketplace. In some sections of Cincinnati and Manassas, Va., consumers now have an alternative to DSL and cable for broadband Internet access. It's real and it works.
IT Roundtable: The Digitized Grid
Data gathering and controllability offer the quickest path to reliability.
Technology leaders at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative present their visions of energy IT in the 21st century.
Merchant Power: Ratepayers Back At Risk
A review of power plant deals in 2004 shows that utilities are buying.
Whether evolution or devolution, the merchant deals done to date show movement to a familiar structure; ratepayers are back at risk. While ratepayers have benefitted from merchant plants, they also paid since competition began with PURPA in 1978, and many of the acquisitions put them at risk for future changes in power values and fuel costs.
LICAP and Its Lessons: A Kink in the Curve
Doubts intensify over New England’s radical new market for electric capacity.
What began nearly two years ago as a simple request by power producers to boost their chances for recovering fixed costs for several power plants in Connecticut has mushroomed into the single most complicated case now pending before FERC.
Navigating the Gray Areas
Successful energy market development means understanding new subtleties and nuances.
A recent McKinsey article proclaimed, “More progress has been made improving the governance of U.S. corporations during the past couple of years than in the several decades preceding them." Yet, revelations from the disgraceful behavior associated with Enron and related events continue to surface and confuse the issue of what is needed today to move energy markets forward.
A Better Merchant Mousetrap?
The failure of the Empire Connection spells trouble for private transmission projects.
It’s at the very heart of all policy initiatives for both electric generation and transmission: How do you attract the right amount of investment without creating an overbuilt market, or a boom-bust scenario? In recent months, utility executives, financiers, and policy-makers have been asking this question with even greater zeal than usual.
An Expensive Experiment? RTO Dollars and Sense
Financial data raises doubts about whether deregulation benefits outweigh costs.
This year, U.S. electricity consumers will spend more than $1 billion financing the operation of six RTOs. RTO costs have nearly doubled since 2001. Restructuring the energy industry was more costly and more risky than anticipated, and reasonable estimates of RTO costs outweigh nearly all of the benefits anticipated.
Cross-Subsidies: Getting the Signals Right
Should regulators care about the inefficiencies?
Utilities were founded to create cross-subsidies, but regulators need to address lingering uncertainties about such subsidies in a coherent, constructive way. The authors offer five recommendations.