Electricity

Courtesy of Mike Giberson, this press release from the Michigan Customer Choice Coalition states that “Michigan’s electric restructuring laws are the only reason why companies have increased reliability by building new generating facilities in Michigan, which is still a net importer of electricity,” said Barry Cargill, chair of the coalition and vice president, government relations …

Electric Customer Choice Delivers Value In Michigan Read More »

Stephen Karlson at Cold Spring Shops picked up on the connection between auctioning air time slots and paying to cut in line. Very cool. The most direct link between those two ideas is another proposal from my former colleague, and Reason’s founder, Bob Poole. Bob has long been an advocate for time slot auctions, the …

More On Pricing To Allocate Network Resources Read More »

While I’m mentioning the Capitol Hill Campus workshops, I should mention that I am doing one tomorrow entitled “State of Our Energy Markets”. Should be an interesting conversation.

I’m a little behind the times, so instead of updating the post I’ll separate direct your attention to Justin’s very correct and informative comment on my post about the Q4 financial results of electric utilities. Yeah, Constellation NewEnergy was never as in the hole as the rest, and some of those who were, like Dynegy, …

More On The State Of The Utility Industry Read More »

So I was catching up on my reading this AM over breakfast, and saw the header on Robert Prather’s post titled “beneficial complexity”. Very cool, I thought, sounds right up my alley. And then to find that the post was a link to me! Jiminy, that’s pretty exciting, thanks! I love the phrase beneficial complexity; …

Flattery; And More On Competitive Transmission Read More »

Slowly, but surely, things are looking up for competitive wholesale electric generators. Today Constellation Energy announced an 83 percent increase in profits in Q4 2003. Much of this performance was driven by its wholesale electricity division, Constellation NewEnergy: The merchant energy business, or wholesale electricity marketing, posted earnings per share of 52 cents, more than …

Competitive Electricity Companies Crawling Out Of The Hole Read More »

While we’re on the subject of energy innovation, please check out Randall Parker’s Futurepundit post on the potential for fuel cell vehicles to heat homes. I’ve discussed this potential with several industry folks, and it is truly exciting. Consider being able to drive up to your house and plug in your car in order to …

Cars As Distributed Generation Sites! Read More »

Many people argue that electricity transmission is a natural monopoly, defined as having a subadditive cost structure (roughly speaking, decreasing long-run average costs over the relevant range of demand). Based on that belief, competitive entry is not allowed. Historically this has arisen because of the vertical integration of the industry, which is itself a consequence …

Hope For Competitive Transmission? Read More »

Five years ago, Pennsylvania was one of the policy leaders in pursuing electricity restructuring. My assessment of the Pennsylvania approach has been that although it has some flaws (such as regulated retail price caps that phase out over 10, count ’em, 10, years), that they struck a good balance in their transition to more market-based …

Update On Pennsylvania’s Electricity Restructuring Read More »

The October 2003 issue of Reason’s Privatization Watch was a special electricity issue, featuring articles on demand response, the August blackout, and how technological change affects regulation. In particular, I’d like to draw your attention to two feature articles. The first, by Vernon Smith, Stephen Rassenti, and Bart Wilson of the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic …

Privatization Watch Electricity Issue Read More »