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.
ECM
Achieving financial returns from increasing customer satisfaction.
Every utility focuses on effectively managing infrastructure and capital assets. However, one important balance sheet asset may be overlooked and under-leveraged-the customer.
Energy traders and risk managers reengineered their business dealings to manage against unexpected political and financial risks posed by California and Enron in 2001.
Frontlines
Pancakes for Breakfast?
Two new transcos wake up to a stack of protests.
With the first deadline only a month away, electric utilities have launched trial balloons before filing plans at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for regional transmission organizations (RTOs).
Telecoms may offer IOUs a model for multiplying market caps by dividing their shareholdings.April 1, 2000
Utility restructuring seems to prompt more lawsuits by customers.
In Chicago, Commonwealth Edison Co. settles a class action lawsuit for a heat-wave outage, paying $2.5 million for items including "food spoilage," to customers served by certain city substations. In California, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spends $8.3 million to resolve 98 percent of some 6,600 outage-related claims.
Do state regulators stand to learn more from their electric choice information programs than the customers they aim to reach?
What does it cost to educate an energy consumer about electric choice? Between $1.60 and $2.26, to judge by the public education campaigns in California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
In the first year of their information programs, these states spent a combined $103 million, funded through consumer rates. Though an impressive total budget for three public initiatives, that amount pales in comparison to the ad dollars spent by General Motors.
An alternative measure of performance - not based on dividends, earnings growth or P/E ratios.
How to place a value on a utility company? That is the question.
The traditional models no longer work very well. Dividend discount models will not work well if utilities cut dividends and buy back stock to return capital to the shareholders. Earnings growth offers no reliable performance gauge either, as utilities acquire or divest large amounts of capital. Restructuring charges often become necessary to shift resources to their best use.
ENERGY SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE LISTED BY THE DOZENS on public utility commission Web sites, often with direct links to the companies themselves. Even so, picking out 10 to watch for their commercial and industrial activity isn't an easy task.
There's no reliable volume data. There's no organization rating the services each of these vendors offers. The ESPs themselves are either reticent about disclosing data or overly boastful. There's no ready apples-to-apples comparison of ESPs available for prospective C&I customers. Still, who is who among ESPs is a legitimate question.
IF CONGRESS SHOULD CONSIDER LEGISLATION TO MANDATE retail wheeling - and even with a date certain - those states that have already opened their markets will still likely ask for reciprocity to guarantee that any competitor seeking entry will welcome competition in its own home territory. Why? Some states are moving more quickly than others. Second, others have indicated they do not intend to open at all.
Arguably, state lawmakers could enact a reciprocal covenant on their own.