|
 |
Into the Wind
It's an issue with several starting points. But regardless of its origins,electric reliability has become every-one’s fundamental concern. Is there enough generation? According to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)—the new electric reliability organization (ERO)—most regions in the country will miss their minimum capacity margin targets between now and 2015. Moreover, some regions that account for large percentages of the nation’s population may miss their targets sometime within the next two to three years.
Is generation capacity the only question? A recent Black & Veatch report, “Strategic Directions in the Electric Utility Industry” (based on a survey of executives in shareholder-owned electric companies) shows that “reliability” is the respondents’ primary concern, followed closely by concerns over the aging of generation, transmission, and distribution assets.
From our perspective, several challenges affect the strengthening of the system: regional parti-sanship, lack of regulatory and legislative direction, the application of weak economic concepts (or the weak application of good concepts), and a focus on immediate profits. We can avert a reliability crisis only through accepting the realities of supply and demand and creating cooperation among all parties in the industry—utilities, federal and state regulators and legislators, and customers and their advocates. The solution will also require innovative approaches to systems and technology—advances in distributed generation, advanced metering and information systems, demand-side management, and regional capacity markets. To us this means the expenditure of substantial capital, and significant, sustained increases in utility rates to fund improvements.
EEI members and EP subscribers, log in now to read this entire article  .
Also see video interview with Richard J. Rudden.
Don't know your user name and password? EEI Members, go to the Log In Help page. EP subscribers, send a password request to LaVonne Rose at lrose@eei.org.
Nonmembers and nonsubscribers, go here immediately to subscribe and gain web access to the magazine rated number-one by electric utility executives and managers!
|
