People
People for November 1, 2003
New opportunities at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Analysis Group, Southwest Gas Corp., and others.
Transmission
Energy Technology: Winner Take All
A review of which technologies and companies stand to win and lose as a result of the 2003 blackout.
After the blackout, the electric industry once again finds itself at a crossroads, confronting it with three basic choices. The authors observe which technologies and companies will win and lose as a result.
What Does Shakespeare Know About Utility Leadership?
New realities demand new direction from utilities.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, "The true soul of joy is in the process." For the utility industry, nothing could be further from the truth. The deregulatory "process" has not been joyful. It has been painful and costly.
Blackouts? never Again! (But...)
We ask merchant grid developers if anything can ever be done.
How will technicians prevent another major blackout? Fortnightly weaves the opinions of industry insiders on the keys to electric reliability with a cautionary tale from Connecticut to present solutions for what’s ailing the grid.
Electric Gridlock: A National Solution
FERC should consider a two-part tariff to boost transmission investment.
The existing transmission system was built to connect a utility’s power plants to its customers. It was never designed for getting power from any generator to any customer in a competitive generation market.
Water Heaters to the Rescue: Demand Bidding in Electric Reserve Markets
With just a few changes in reliability rules, regulators could call on consumer loads to boost power reserves for outages and contingencies.
By accommodating loads with limited storage and deploying resources in a more sophisticated manner, grid operators could expand the range of reliability resources. Consider the electric water heater.
Edison Shrugged
The crisis of confidence in today's power industry is, at its heart, a crisis of ideas.
A market-based system requires that regulators establish a level playing field but not interfere unduly with the game itself.
Gas Crisis Forum: Is It Real, or Is It Hype?
Chicken Little has cornered the market on gas price doom and gloom, but the data is inconsistent on whether high gas prices are here to stay.
“Crisis” makes for good business to an interesting assortment of players in the energy industry, but such talk could lead to unnecessary and untimely legislative and regulatory intercession. Investment, not government intervention, could be the answer.
Watching the Watchers
Can RTO market monitors really be independent?
Can RTO market monitors really be independent?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) initiatives on regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and standard market design give new prominence to the market monitoring institution (MMI), a novel regulatory tool never before contemplated in legislation.1
The Coming Transmission Credit Crisis
How can transmission providers safely serve noncreditworthy customers?