For The 21st Century

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So it begins again. After several financially tumultuous years, executives at many of the nation's top utilities can once again look to the horizon and ask the growth question worthy of a Caesar: "What worlds to conquer?"

Utility executives are emboldened by bulging free cash flows, improved credit quality, lower operations and maintenance costs, favorable regulatory treatment, growing service territories, and increasing demand for power.

GAS SUPPLY

Pipeline and LNG terminal developments may arrive too late to prevent a natural gas disaster.

For exactly two months, MidAmerican Energy sponsored a $6.3 billion project to bring stranded natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to an adjoining pipeline in Canada. But when Alaska's Department of Revenue rejected MidAmerican's proposal for an exclusive partnership to develop the pipeline, the company pulled out.

Technology Corridor

Energy Storage Systems

How to reduce the cycling costs of conventional generation.

Energy Storage Systems (ESS) can provide significant benefits associated with reduced damage to fossil-fuel power plants if the ESS is used in such as way that it reduces start-ups or load-following/cycling. Though those benefits may not be well known, understood, or documented, they are real and ascertainable.

ECM

The technology behind demand-side response.

Across the country, policy-makers are working with both federal and state legislators and regulators to define policies and laws that will impact how utilities do business in the coming years. One policy receiving much attention right now may require electric utilities to offer voluntary demand-response programs to their customers. Demand-response programs allow customers to voluntarily adjust their daily energy usage in a manner that is acceptable with their needs.

Voltage Regulation

Reactive power is the key to an efficient and reliable grid.

Technology Corridor

Fundamentals in the energy markets are converging to increase the need for incremental gas storage.

The natural gas market is approaching a dramatic turning point. The fundamentals in the energy markets are converging to increase the need for incremental gas storage and the way that storage is used and valued by the customer community. Why is new storage needed? What will it take for new storage to be developed? What do customers need to commit to new storage projects?

Power Measurement

IOUs take action, but other overriding forces will affect prices in the near term.

It's going to be a wild summer for the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), courtesy of higher than forecasted load growth, high gas prices, delays and cancellations of renewable resources, and lower than normal hydro generation.