Electricity Policy

       

Wed05222013

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Additional Articles

Right Question, Wrong Answer: How Consumers Are Benefitting, and Will Continue To Benefit, from Competitive Electricity Markets

Right Question, Wrong Answer:  How Consumers Are Benefitting, and Will Continue To Benefit, from Competitive Electricity Markets

 by John E. Shelk and Glen Thomas

We strongly reject assertions some have made that organized competitive markets are seriously flawed. In fact, competitive wholesale and retail power markets continue to deliver tangible benefits to consumers.  These markets are generally working well but can be improved. That should be the focus of any dialogue over these issues.
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lectricityPolicy.com recently published an article that asked the right question, “Have Restructured Wholesale Electricity Markets Benefitted Consumers?”  Unfortunately, co-authors Elise Caplan of the American Public Power Association (APPA) and Stephen Brobeck of the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) wrongly conclude that the answer is “no.” In so doing, they ignore the realities of today’s wholesale and retail market.  So, as Paul Harvey used to say, “And now the rest of the story.”

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Preparing for Merger Applications: Regulatory Bottom Lines

Preparing for Merger Applications:  Regulatory Bottom Lines

 by Scott Hempling

To deal with merger applications most efficiently, regulators should first adopt a considered position that addresses such issues as business activities, ownership relationships and consumer risks – and possess protective tools they are willing to use.
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t is typical of utility mergers that the utility proposes and the regulator reacts.  My recent essay explained that despite dozens of merger approvals, US regulation has no consistent vision for corporate couplings in our infrastructural industries.  The prevailing principle is Hippocratic:  “First do no harm” — i.e., merge if you wish, but don't raise rates, don't reduce competition, and don't degrade service.

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A Visionary Path to Sustainable, Clean, and Affordable Energy

A Visionary Path to Sustainable, Clean, and Affordable Energy

 by Leah Y. Parks

Professor Mark Jacobson’s research shows that interconnected systems of wind, solar, and water power can transition the world from an inadequate and unsustainable energy future to one in which everything is powered by electricity and the ravages of climate change are avoided.  Timely action is required.
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he challenges facing providers of electricity – a service essential to life as we know it –– are many.  Electricity suppliers in the US and around the world must attempt to meet our growing needs for energy in the face of obstacles that cannot fully be known today. 

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Utility Mergers: Who Has a Vision?

Utility Mergers: Who Has a Vision?

 by Scott Hempling

Only by articulating their own vision of a merger—of excellent performance and corporate and market structures most likely to produce that excellence—can regulators ensure that a merger is likely to produce a result that is in the public interest.
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adison Gas & Electric serves the Madison, Wisconsin area.  It is the sole utility subsidiary of the publicly traded holding company MGE Energy.  MGE’s regulated utility business represents nearly 99% of the holding company’s business:  whether measured in assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses or operations.  And the 1% in unregulated business is all performed for energy customers in and around Madison.

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Transactional Signals, Customer Engagement, and the Path Toward a Smarter, More Efficient Power Grid

Transactional Signals, Customer Engagement, and the Path Toward a Smarter, More Efficient Power Grid

 by Carl Imhoff

Smart grid demonstration projects underway in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere will show the nation the way to a more efficient, economic, durable, and environmentally sound power grid for the 21st century.  A transactive, regional signal may be a key element.
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he nation is poised at an important moment in the transformation of its electric power system.

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Electricity Daily

Climate change and Okla. tornadoes: They don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand

Climate change and Okla. tornadoes: They don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand

By Kennedy Maize

May 22, 2013 – Within minutes of the devastating Moore, Okla., tornado this week, the Twitterverse and blogosphere were exploding with claims that this is further evidence of global warming. But it is not evidence of any kind, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, home to the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

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Head of Japan atomic agency resigns over continuing Monju reactor scandal

Head of Japan atomic agency resigns over continuing Monju reactor scandal

Atsuyuki Suzuki, the head of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, the government’s nuclear research and development arm, has resigned after the Nuclear Regulation Authority, the equivalent to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, refused permission to restart the long-troubled Monju fast breeder reactor . Investigators last fall identified inspection failures at the 280-MW breeder project, which has been...

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N.C. bill to kill renewable mandate dies

N.C. bill to kill renewable mandate dies

North Carolina legislation aimed at killing the state’s renewable energy portfolio standard has died, this time for real (at least for the current legislative session). The legislation, with sponsorship from key Republicans in the GOP-controlled legislature, initially failed in a House committee. But supporters revived the bill in the Senate, where it passed in a friendly committee. But then anoth...

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NARUC asks FERC rehearing on Order 1000 filing, cites deference to states

NARUC asks FERC rehearing on Order 1000 filing, cites deference to states

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners yesterday asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rehear its April decision on the Order 1000 transmission planning compliance filing by South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. NARUC’s petition says, “FERC’s action on this compliance filing seems, on its face, at odds with the deference suggested by FERC in Order 1000, especially...

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Moniz sworn in, begins tweeting

Moniz sworn in, begins tweeting

Ernest Moniz yesterday was sworn in as secretary of energy, following his May 16 Senate confirmation by a vote of 97-0. Moniz, an MIT physicist and veteran energy policy wonk, held a high-ranking position in the Clinton administration’s energy department. He brings to the job a breadth in energy issues, and particularly energy politics, that his immediate predecessor, Steven Chu, a long-time hard-...

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FERC orders change in Midwest ISO’s formula transmission rate process

FERC orders change in Midwest ISO’s formula transmission rate process

By Kennedy Maize

May 21, 2013 – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week ordered MISO and its transmission owners to revamp how it administers its formula transmission rates in order to give users more input into annual changes in the rates and provide greater transparency in the rate setting process. In a 5-0 vote, the commission concluded that while formula rates are useful in transmiss...

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Editorials

Of energy mythology, centralized planning, and diversity

Of energy mythology, centralized planning, and diversity

Philip Sharp, who we remember as a remarkably fair-minded and constructive member of Congress, a Democrat from Indiana in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when he chaired the House Energy and Power Subcommittee – yes, such things happened in those days – had a number of astute things to say in an interview with the Electricity Daily’s Ken Maize, which we published this week.

Among those observations, Sharp noted t...

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From Nukeland, Greenland, and Gasland: No schadenfreude over Europe’s stew

From Nukeland, Greenland, and Gasland: No schadenfreude over Europe’s stew

We aren’t gloating over Europe’s and Britain’s difficulties planning a carbon-reduced future. Really.

Last week a report issued from Parliament saying that Europe will need $1 trillion euros in financial commitments before 2020 to stave off an energy crisis.

The grim details: After an eight-month inquiry by Britain’s House of Lords into the EU power sector – during which testimony was taken from the E...

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Pumped hydro storage: Water, water everywhere – it makes me stop and think.

Pumped hydro storage: Water, water everywhere – it makes me stop and think.

The Paul Masson winery used to promise, when US wines were on the brink of acceptability, “We will sell no wine before its time.”

The question about pumped hydro storage, our most common form of grid storage, is: did it become invisible before its time? Minions of scientists and entrepreneurs around the globe are in a race to develop readily deployable and economic forms of storage. Yet pumped storag...

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The Next Game Changer

The Next Game Changer

In an industry in which assets are typically long-lived – 20 years at minimum, to 50 years or more – it’s hard but necessary to try to see into the future.

I have friends I consider savvier than myself, people who have followed the energy game for a long time. For example, my associate, Ken Maize, editor of this Daily and founding executive editor of Managing POWER magazine, is famously skeptical a...

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Will the Entergy-ITC merger fall into a rabbit hole?

Will the Entergy-ITC merger fall into a rabbit hole?

In the shadowy underworld of Alice in Wonderland , where things are not always what they seem, our young heroine was heard to remark on the changing nature of things, “Curiouser and curiouser!”

So it is with the complex merger dance that has involved Entergy Corp. and Michigan-based transmission company ITC Holdings, which aims to acquire Entergy’s transmission system and then spin it off into a new ...

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Grid modernization and performance metrics

Grid modernization and performance metrics

Jesse Berst, founder and chief analyst of Smart Grid News.com, has two recent posts that deserve attention. Both address approaches to grid modernization and utility performance in implementing grid mod in a way that delivers the projected benefits to customers and to the system.

The first concerns a collaborative approach to funding grid modernization –smart grid, if you prefer – that has blossomed ...

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