San Diego Gas & Electric turns vendor heads with its plan to install real-time meters, but the company could face heat from regulators.
This is a landmark event," says Bill Rush, a physicist at the Gas Technology Institute, and a gas industry expert on electric utility metering systems.
News Digest
How Colorado's settlement in the Xcel merger builds a case for treating needy ratepayers as a separate class entitled to merger benefits.
News Digest
An interview with David A. Boger, Stephen D. Moritz and Joseph G. Baran of Strategic Energy Ltd.
The expiration and renegotiation of firm transportation contracts on the pipelines in North America is becoming increasingly complex. For example, TransCanada Pipeline ("TransCanada") in the past consistently renewed its expiring contracts for five- to 10-year periods at maximum rates. It also regularly expanded its capacity, requiring 10-year commitments two years in advance of availability.
Once trailing, but now the frontrunner, Germany attempts to remake its fragmented energy markets - with no new federal bureaucracy.
Here's a timely recommendation for U.S. electric power executives: Maybe it's time to brush up on those long-forgotten high school German lessons. Suddenly, the German electric power market has become the fastest changing in the world. It all happened in less than the two years passed since Germany enacted a new energy law, which became fully effective on April 28, 1998.
A century gone by and we're still no closer to real choice in electricity.
The magazine being what it is, this column usually goes to press at least three weeks ahead of the cover date. Ordinarily I try to anticipate some upcoming event before the fact.
With this issue, however, the job gets tougher. It's more than a new year. In the popular view it's a new century. (But mathematicians know the Millennium begins in 2001.)
Did the electric grid crash on Jan. 1? Did the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announce its new rule on regional transmission organizations on Dec.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Joint Ventures. The Federal Trade Commission, in consultation with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, issued draft antitrust guidelines for "collaborations among competitors" that will apply to a wide range of joint ventures and strategic alliances other than actual mergers.
Such collaborations would include R&D efforts, information sharing and joint efforts in marketing, distribution, sales or purchasing, plus various types of trade association activities. File No. 971201, Oct. 1, 1999 (F.T.C.), published at 64 Fed. Reg.
What the Supreme Court thinks about handicapping the incumbent to level the field for new players.
Regulators today sit on the horns of a dilemma: How far to level the field in the name of competition?
If regulators fear market power in the incumbent utility, and so impose restrictions on its activities and assets, they may impair its effectiveness and thus distort the very competition they attempt to foster.
The "duty to connect" demands definition - such as the optimal investment in local wires, and who should pay for it.
As the electric utility industry continues its slow but inexorable transformation into a more "competitive" industry, there has been a notable absence of discussion concerning continued regulation of local distribution utilities, or discos.