Business

A number of automotive manufacturers, electric utilities, electric power associations, and research groups are working to develop and evaluate technical approaches to integrating plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) into the U.S. electrical grid system. This is a key requirement of facilitating widespread, near-term adoption of PEVs by the American public.

David K. Owens, executive vice president, Business Operations Group for the Edison Electric Institute, comments on the progress U.S. utilities are making toward a smarter electrical power grid.

In a surprising decision, a federal agency surrendered some of its regulatory authority—and parts of the industry don’t approve. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declined to defend its jurisdiction over station power in the California power market, potentially giving an economic advantage to utility generators nationwide and putting merchant generators at a disadvantage.

If you needed additional proof that the power industry is changing, the ELECTRIC POWER keynote and panel discussions over the past few years have provided it—top-of-mind issues have been significantly different each year. For the 2011 keynote speaker and panelists, the challenges of reliability, regulatory compliance, financing, and getting the fuel mix right took center stage. In the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis, safety also featured prominently.

Both the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and the Chernobyl catastrophe prompted worldwide retreats away from nuclear electric generating technologies. Despite brave rhetoric from nuclear supporters around the world, a number of countries with a large number of nuclear plants are having second thoughts about the future of nuclear power.

How easy is it to hack a generator’s SCADA system? It’s so easy it scares the heck out of the guy who used to run network security for the Bonneville Power Administration. It’s so easy he can’t tell us any details, for security reasons. That’s why we should all be scared.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is starting to sort out the often mysterious and vexing issues surrounding reliability penalties as the federal agency and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. work through their evolving relationship. The case involves an outage at the Turlock Irrigation District in California.

It’s the middle managers, not the charismatic strategists in the executive suite or the creative propeller-heads in R&D, who really make organizations run, according to a new study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

In the last issue of MANAGING POWER we looked at some of the important points to keep in mind when writing an employee handbook to ensure that employees will actually will read it and adhere to its policies. This concluding article covers 10 of the most important policies that should be included.

FERC has surrendered jurisdiction over station power in California, putting merchant generators nationwide at risk of disadvantage to utility generators.