NEWS & TRENDS

CONSTRUCTION, DEMAND STAY UP
Despite slow times in the energy industry in 2002, approximately 54,000 megawatts (MW) of new generation were brought online, an increase in new supply of 7 percent, according to Energy Argus, a news and analysis resource for the industry. "We've hit a peak in terms of new capacity," says Peter Rosenthal of Argus. "We may see a similar number this year, but it won't be as high." The reason for this growth in an economic downturn is due to the long lead-time required for power projects. "The plants that came online last year were planned during 1996-1998, when deregulation of electricity was taking off," says Rosenthal. The new generation was actually three-fourths of what was expected to come online, a result of spending cuts at many utilities.

Other signs of positive growth include growth in the gross domestic product (GDP), which at the end of third quarter 2002 was 4 percent higher than the previous year. Tracking GDP was electricity: There was a 4.1 percent increase in electric output in 2002 over the same period in 2001,— according to Edison Electric Institute. Electric output is measured as the net generation by the electric system's own plants, plus purchased energy, plus or minus net interchange energy, minus sales for resale—essentially the electricity made available for consumption in any given week. It is also a measure of electricity demand.

A substantial increase in cooling and heating degree days partly explain the surging demand in 2002—in fact, there was a new all-time record for weekly demand for the week ending August 3, in which 90,640 gigawatt-hours were delivered. Also, in 2001, electric output declined by 1 percent, which is unusual in any year. So overall, for the two-year period ending December 31, 2002, total aggregate demand grew at an average annual rate of 1.7 percent.

FIRE AND ICE
Last January, Edison Electric Institute honored eight power companies for outstanding service restoration and recovery efforts following severe storms and other extreme events in 2002. Six companies won Emergency Response Awards; two won awards for Emergency Assistance.

The Emergency Response Award winners recounted a variety of success stories. (Look for an upcoming story on emergency response practices in Electric Perspectives' May/June issue.)

• Cleco earned its award for restoring power in the wake of Hurricane Lili, which lashed the Louisiana coastline last October, wreaking havoc on all three divisions of the company's service territory. Its recovery blueprint directed 22 different teams comprising 3,500 workers, 2,500 of whom were members of mutual assistance and contract crews.
• Indianapolis Power & Light (IPL) battled widespread power outages left by three tornadoes that ripped through central Indiana in September, toppling numerous transmission towers and lines and hundreds of distribution poles and transformers and putting some 65,000 customers in the dark. Restoration efforts, keyed around use of the company's storm support center, were completed in five days.
• Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) met the challenge of restoring service after a severe January ice storm brought down trees and power lines over a huge area, interrupting service to 305,000 of the company's 450,000 customers and prompting both Kansas City and Missouri to declare states of emergency. Despite extensive damage, 67 percent of KCP&L's customers had power restored within two days, 95 percent within seven days, and all customers within nine days.
• OG&E Energy Services also won for its efforts in combating the same January ice storm, which left nearly a third of its service territory blanketed in ice, destroying thousands of transmission and distribution structures and knocking down hundreds of miles of power lines. The company's storm plan allowed restoration of power to 65 percent of customers within three days and to all customers within two weeks, although recovery work continued for months.
• Southern California Edison was honored for its response to more than 30 fires between April and September, affecting 423 square miles of service territory and roughly 500 miles of transmission lines. The company's grid control center rapidly assessed damage and communicated ongoing threats to the transmission and distribution systems, and its fire management team worked closely with fire and emergency personnel. SCE's response also emphasized communication with the public.
• Westar similarly battled the effects of the January ice storm, which knocked out power to much of the Topeka-based company's geographically diverse service territory, an area that includes large cities, small towns, and isolated rural areas. Westar restored 50 percent of its power within the first day, 80 percent within three days, and 100 percent within nine days. Emergency Assistance Award recipients had similar experiences.
• Entergy provided critical assistance to KCP&L and OG&E in the wake of the January ice storms, dispatching line repair teams and tree-clearing crews to assist each company. Entergy's storm teams include personnel responsible for all aspects of recovery efforts—the company assigns each team to a geographic area as a self-sufficient unit, requiring no assistance from the host utility. Entergy has won either the Emergency Assistance Award or the Emergency Response Award for five consecutive years since their inception, the only utility to do so.
• Illinois Power sent its employees and contract crews to aid two companies—UtiliCorp United's Missouri Public Service division following the ice storms, and IPL in the wake of the multiple tornadoes. The assistance to UtiliCorp came on the heels of similar efforts on behalf of Northern Indiana Public Service Company and in its own service area, with many of the same employees assisting with all three recovery efforts.

"These companies faced down some of the worst storms and events in their histories, and they rose to meet each challenge in a manner that reflects the industry at its very best," said EEI president Tom Kuhn. "We are proud to honor them for their dedication to customer service and their expertise in delivering it."

TWELVE YEARS LATER After more than a decade of seeking regulatory approvals to build a transmission line linking Wyoming County, WV, with Jacksons Ferry, VA, American Electric Power received a favorable environmental impact statement from the U.S. Forest Service, a significant step to completing the planning phase of the project. The company hopes to get the final go-ahead this April. AEP's project is an example of just how difficult, time-consuming, and expensive it can be to build new transmission in the United States. 1973 - when AEP last reinforced the transmission system in the area   135 - percent by which demand in the region has increased since then 1990 - when plans for the Wyoming-Cloverdale line were announced 2006 - when AEP expects to see the line operational   287 - millions of dollars the line will cost in the end     90 - miles the line will extend   132 - average height of each tower in feet

GETTING GROUNDED
New research into transmission line design and lightning protection could help utilities reduce the damage lightning causes their facilities each year. Lightning is the most frequent cause of transmission outages and service interruptions, according to Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Some 30 percent of all power outages are lightning-related, with total industry costs approaching $1 billion annually.

According to EPRI, one of the key factors in the performance of lightning-struck transmission lines is the dynamic resistance of ground electrodes and concrete tower footings and the dielectric properties of the underlying soils.

Under low-magnitude, steady-state current conditions, the footing resistance of a transmission tower is constant. But when a lightning current flows through the footing, its magnitude does not remain constant. Instead, it changes as a function of the lightning current waveform in reaction to the ionization of the soil surrounding the buried electrode. Soil ionization decreases the footing resistance by effectively increasing the dimensions of the electrode. The reduction in footing resistance, therefore, increases with increasing current magnitude.

Existing algorithms that try to capture the interactions of lightning currents, footing resistance, and soil ionization are not very accurate in representing what happens in a real-world lightning storm. The algorithms are based on limited measurements performed with relatively low-current magnitudes and a small number of soil types and electrode configurations. This has led to a wide divergence in predictions.

During 2000 and 2001, EPRI investigated the electrical properties of various soil types, including sand, clay, loam, and crushed rock. For each soil, EPRI determined such electrical characteristics as uniform field dielectric strength under lightning impulse voltages, effects of moisture, and the permanence of breakdown paths.

EPRI also tested full-scale rod and buried counterpoise ground electrodes, with sand, clay, and gravel surrounding the electrodes. The results included a substantial amount of data on electrode resistance and soilionization characteristics—including, for the first time, measurements of full-scale ground electrodes using current impulses with magnitudes up to 40 kiloamps, which is higher than previously published measurements.

Based on that understanding of how transmission grounding systems react, says EPRI's Andrew Phillips, "we can predict the lightning performance of transmission lines better and more cost-effectively design surge arresters and other protective measures."

EPRI's findings will be published this spring in a guidebook for transmission line grounding systems. With the research, EPRI also has improved its TFlash software—a design tool for analyzing the effects of lightning events on a transmission line, as well as mitigation techniques.

For more information, contact Andrew Phillips at aphillip@epri.com.

RANKING THE GURUS
You see evidence of them in every bookstore you enter, and they pop up as general session speakers at any number of business conferences. Friends and colleagues try to convince you to buy their CDs and read their books. In some areas of business, their following reaches a cult status. They're known as "gurus," and what they have to tell you, they say, could change your life.

So what is a guru, really? Webster's second definition defines a guru as "a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern." According to Accenture, a guru is a "business intellectual whose stock in trade is new ideas and advice."

Accenture recently ranked the country's top 50 business gurus—the people who are full of wisdom and advice for the rest of us about how to achieve business and professional success (although some specialize in other areas). Accenture's ranking system was based on three criteria—the number of times each guru's name came up in a Google internet search; how many times the guru's name appeared on the Social Sciences Citation Index (a measure of the number of times academics have cited the guru's published work); and the number of times the guru is mentioned in the business and popular media as recorded by Lexis-Nexis. The consulting group chose 300 names according to this system, also used by Richard Posner's 2002 ranking of "public intellectuals."

At the top of the list appeared Michael Porter, business strategist and Harvard Business School professor, who ranked thirteenth in Google hits, second in mentions by academics, and eighth in media mentions. The top four after him were Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence; Robert Reich, former secretary of labor; Peter Drucker (known as the godfather of business management thinking, according to Accenture); and Nobel laureate Gary Becker. Other big names making the top 100 included Steven Covey and Bill Gates.

MORE ON MINES
Reclaiming abandoned mine lands is a way for electric utilities to participate in carbon sequestration as part of a larger utility effort to help voluntarily reduce or otherwise mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. (See Electric Perspectives, January/February 2003, "Reclaiming the Mines.")

But as Carol Raulston, senior vice president of communications at the National Mining Association, reminded us, utilities aren't the only ones actively reclaiming the mines. Since 1977, U.S. coal mining companies have paid $7 billion into the Office of Surface Mining's Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation fund. Of that amount, some $4.5 billion has been spent by the agency—with roughly $2 billion going to actual reclamation efforts. In addition, the industry announced in early January that it had surpassed the 2 million acre milestone for reclamation of mined lands since 1978.

RETAIL GROWTH
Recent KEMA-XENERGY research shows dramatic growth in U.S. competitive electricity supply over the past 18 months, despite ongoing energy industry woes. Since mid-2001, competitively priced electricity supply more than doubled. Right now, an estimated 40,000 megawatts (MW) of peak electricity demand are competitively supplied, a 166-percent increase from an estimated 15,000 MW that was being supplied about 18 months ago.

Customer participation in competitive markets is also on the rise, according to the research firm, which reported that since mid-2001, an additional 700,000 (or about 50 percent more) customers switched energy suppliers for a total of about 2.1 million participating customers.

Moreover, this market participation has resulted in significant customer benefits. "Business consumers have experienced substantial savings through energy market restructuring," said Bruce Humphrey, KEMA-XENERGY vice president. "We have observed savings levels over the utility default rates in the 10-30 percent range. Mass market customers have been slower to move to competitive offers, but savings are typically available in the 5-15 percent range."

The Texas market leads the country both in terms of customer migration, new entrants, and choice of competitive offers. Of the 40,000 MW switched nationwide in 2002, Texas accounted for approximately 11,000. By comparison, Illinois, New York, and Ohio each accounted for just over 3,000 MW. Part of Texas' success is attributable to the fact that Texas customers have a wide diversity of offers and services to choose from and are spurring a rapidly growing renewable energy market.

© 2008 Edison Electric Institute