Table of ContentsFeaturesCon Edison takes top honors by sticking to the basicsWhen other utilities were venturing into diverse, unregulated businesses, Consolidated Edison Inc. (Con Edison) continued its conservative "wires and pipes" approach to sustaining financial strength.
FERC branches out to energy market oversight and investigationsEarlier this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) opened up a new branch labeled the Office of Market Oversight and Investigations (OMOI). OMOI's function, according to FERC, is to help the commission "improve its understanding of energy market operations and ensure vigilant and fair oversight of those areas under the commission's jurisdiction."
Got a date with a judge? CCA can help you prepare"Ken Lay could have really used your services," I joked while interviewing Nancie Poppema, executive vice president for the Communication Counsel of America.
FERC Standard Market Design: Restoring momentum to deregulationThe Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Standard Market Design (SMD) Notice of Rule Making (NOPR) is best described as a "back to the basics" initiative that is intended to restore deregulation momentum in the United States and all of North America.
OpinionCalling for a timeoutWhen you start reading this, visualize the hand symbol for a timeout. I'm officially going to wander along several tangents, some directly related to our industry, most not.
Guest Commentary: Security's bottom line: Knowledgeable electrical engineers can cause blackoutsThe Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center should have been a wake-up call to designers and operators of America's infrastructure. Al-Queda operatives demonstrated that they have the time and talent to study technical systems, uncover weak points, and initiate actions that will exploit those weaknesses.
DepartmentsNewsNews BriefsPeoples Energy announced that its oil and gas production subsidiary, Peoples Energy Production, has purchased an interest in five properties in south Texas and the upper Texas gulf coast area from a subsidiary of Magnum Hunter Resources Inc., for approximately $33 million.
Benefit of counsel: Standard Market Design— Snake oil or a silver bullet?Last month, we discussed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) staff's initial response to Enron's trading strategies.
U.S. consumers less aware of energy issuesConsumer awareness of electric deregulation took a dip for the first time in five years according to the results of our recently released 2002 Deloitte & Touche Consumer Awareness Survey of Electric Deregulation.
FinanceRaising capital in an unforgiving marketGiven the ongoing quagmire of problems in the energy sector, member firms are employing a wide array of methods in order to raise much-needed capital. Bankruptcies, credit downgrades and scandals have all but stifled traditional capital-raising conduits, further eroding investor trust.
Debt abyss spurs increased scrutiny of managementThroughout 2002, Miller McConville & Co. has continued to raise serious concerns regarding the mounting energy debt crisis and significant management problems in the U.S. power and gas industry.
Transmission & DistributionLattice transmission tower analysis moves beyond the simple truss modelThe method of analysis for transmission line towers has advanced since the use of graphically procedures.
Existing and potential constraints within ERCOTSince Texas opened its electricity market to competition in January 2002, a major part of a successful restructuring operation has been transmission lines—how many there are and if there's enough transmission capacity to meet changing requirements.
Visualizing the electric grid for power management and marketingThe electric power system is now one of the largest and most complex of man-made objects, with billions of components, tens of millions of kilometers of transmission line, thousands of generators, and power outputs ranging from under 100 kW to more than 1000 MW.
Info. TechnologyHow do the recent trends in mobile computing apply to utilities?As businesses continue to emphasize and require anytime-anywhere access to corporate information, we see more enterprise applications with wireless components enabling far more than email exchange.
Customer SystemsBut is it working? How to properly monitor call centersYou may ask, "What is calibration and why do I need it?" To properly answer the question, let's talk first about your call monitoring program.
TechnologyFuel cells growing into viable power optionThese days, news about fuel cells can often be found throughout the media, from The Wall Street Journal to Country Living Magazine.
Tech BriefsSiemens Energy & Automation announced a reorganized and refocused national industrial services organization called Siemens Industrial Services.
Management MethodsCommunicate on all levelsThere is often a disparity between what people say and what they indicate on a nonverbal level. Real communication between people includes more than words alone.
Give instructions in small dosesWhen you have complex instructions to give, particularly to inexperienced workers, don't overwhelm them by explaining everything at once.
Electric & Gas TradingWSI issues winter forecast for energy tradersWSI Corp. issued the winter forecast for the upcoming three-month period (December to February). WSI expects the period to be cooler-than-normal in the eastern third of the U.S., as well as in the southern and central plains.
Northeast wholesale prices expected to remain lowThe wholesale price of electricity in the Northeast is low compared to historical levels and is expected to stay that way for several years to come according to Henwood's recently released study of Northeast electricity and gas markets.
NEPOOL jump-starts generation information certificatesAPX, a provider of transaction processing services for the electric power industry, recently announced that the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL) Generation Information System (GIS) has created a total of 63 million electricity generation "certificates."
Florida Power offers new services to customers through partnership with AllconnectFlorida Power now offers a new range of services for new residential customers and for customers moving within the company's service territory through a partnership with Allconnect, a company that assists consumers in selecting and ordering brand name utility and communications services.
Power PointersPrimer on LMPLocational Marginal Pricing (LMP) is a methodology for pricing electricity and managing transmission congestion that has been used by PJM and NY-ISO, and is likely to be adopted across the U.S. by Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) such as MISO and CAL-ISO and SeTrans.
|
|
