Grid Reform to Date
How the feds opened the supply side.
The sheer scale of growth put a ‘stake through the heart’ of the old view.
Investor-owned utilities
Achieving Interoperability
The smart grid requires utilities and regulators to assert leadership.
Adopting an interoperable framework for the smart grid isn’t just a question of technology standardization. It’s also about navigating the legal, regulatory, and business factors that affect technology implementation. Making the smart grid work will require utilities and regulators to assert leadership.
Black Swans and Turkeys
The industry isn’t as robust as we might think.
Investor-owned utilities might seem fairly robust, but they’re not impervious to unpredictable black-swan events. Ensuring the industry’s survival might depend on our ability to reduce our dependence on fragile and unsustainable regulatory structures.
Dividend Debacle
Investors get caught in partisan crossfire.
Investor-owned utilities get caught in the partisan crossfire, as candidates engage in a national food fight over tax policies.
Beyond Green Hype
Getting realistic about energy efficiency.
Is energy efficiency the answer to all our energy problems? The solution is more complicated than the hype would suggest. Only a practical approach can overcome barriers to capturing efficiency savings as a sustainable resource.
Carbon Wargames
U.S. utilities gain strategic insights by playing out a carbon-constraint scenario.
Uncertainties over natural-gas prices, carbon regulation, and clean-technology alternatives are inhibiting investment in new power plants. An emissions “wargame” from Booz, Allen & Hamilton shows how companies might react to large, multidimensional changes in the generation landscape. The exercise raises strategic questions about competitive positions on the climate battlefront.
The Hidden Costs of Sarbanes-Oxley
Can they be reduced?
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has cost public companies millions, if not billions, of dollars in extra costs. One must ask: What is the total cost of Sarbanes-Oxley, and is it worth it?
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.
Transmission Investment: All Talk and Little Action
Except for local reinforcements and new generation interconnections, few transmission construction proposals are moving forward.
Just how much money should be spent on transmission infrastructure in the coming years? The answer depends on which study you read, but despite discrepancies, several threads among the current studies can be ascertained.
Western Power Markets: Ready for A Wild Ride
IOUs take action, but other overriding forces will affect prices in the near term.
The new capacity brought on line in 2003 and 2004 likely will not drive down market prices but may well provide a measure of reliability to the market, possibly counteracting some of the usual price volatility seen in low hydro years. This is good news for the wholesale power business, and it signals that the industry is beginning to claw its way back from the near-death experience of the past few years.