How to make sure your outsourcing partner works as an extension of your IT organization.
The utility HR department is the new battleground.
Special ECM Section
The conclusions made by the NPC gas study raise more questions than they answer.
Power Measurement
Energy trading returns, healthier and wiser.
The recent announcement of a trading joint venture between TXU and Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) is the latest in a series of positive news items supporting the return of energy trading. Wall Street firms continue to expand into the energy-trading sector, with Citigroup as well as CSFB moving into an area already well represented by the likes of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and UBS.
While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.
Time is running out. It's been more than two years since the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Joint Inadvertent Interchange Taskforce (JIITF), on which I served, issued its white paper[1] proposing how to price the unscheduled power (inadvertent interchange)1 flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities (BAs).
Russia resurrects the Kyoto Protocol and the prospect of either mandatory CO2 emissions cuts for U.S. utilities, or the start of a global trade war.
In June 2001, the Bush administration withdrew an earlier campaign pledge to support the Kyoto Protocol, claiming that the treaty was fatally flawed in not requiring China and India to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and that the science underpinning the treaty was not yet definitive enough to justify the costs of compliance.1
Seams, holes, and historic precedent challenge the Midwest ISO's evolution.
In a single sentence, Bill Smith of the Organization of MISO States (OMS) summarizes prevailing concerns about the new-and-improved Midwest ISO: "When it starts, it has to work."
Untapped T&D measurement data could make the difference on reliability.
Utility executives rely on sound decision making to determine how resources should be allocated, to ensure that systems operate with a maximum efficiency and reliability at the lowest cost. These executives walk the fine line of deciding where money should be spent to minimize the likelihood of an expensive catastrophe while also achieving a targeted level of reliability. These issues include:
Perspective
Grid reliability is one giant step in mainstreaming the technology.
Wind power is coming of age in the United States. During the past five years, installations have grown by an average 28 percent yearly. Gleaming, high-tech wind turbines now are interconnected to the bulk power grid in some 30 states.