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Section 203 of the Federal Power Act requires certain mergers and acquisitions to be “consistent with the public interest.” Since its 1996 Merger Policy Statement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has applied this standard by assessing a merger’s effect on competition, rates, and the effectiveness of regulation. Does its approach need updating?

Utility-scale solar generation projects require significant upfront expenditures on photovoltaic panels and other equipment. The success of such projects largely depends on whether the system performs as promised by the manufacturers. This puts a premium on properly evaluating and effectively negotiating equipment warranties.

One of the most important communication skills for leaders and managers is listening.    In your professional life, listening is at the heart of effective leadership, and in your personal life, listening is an act of love.

Washington’s greenhouse gang has learned that global warming is a losing issue. They’re back with a new strategy.


Despite a quiet 2011, this year promises to be one of the biggest for power industry mergers in quite some time—if FERC lets it happen.

Integrys Energy Group subsidiary Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPS) on Monday filed for a Certificate of Authority (CA) from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSCW) to install Regenerative Activated Coke Technology (ReACT) at its 321-MW Weston 3 plant.

Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa on Monday said it would start the permitting process for the installation of its first offshore prototype, the 50-Hz G128-5.0 MW at Arinaga Quay in Spain’s Gran Canary Island—not Cape Charles, Va., as it had initially proposed. The decision was driven by technical and wind resource considerations, offshore market trends, and investment return criteria, the firm said.

Small-scale technology tests by the U.S. and Japan in the North Slope of Alaska have extracted a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said on Wednesday. If new research efforts to conduct long-term production tests in the Arctic and Gulf Coast are successful, they could unlock a “vast, entirely untapped resource” that would hold significant enormous potential for U.S. energy security, the agency said.

The events that left 2.7 million power customers in Southern California, Arizona, and Baja California in the dark on Sept. 8, 2011, stemmed from operating in an unsecured state due to inadequate planning, a lack of observability, and awareness of system operating conditions on the day of the event, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) concluded in a report released on Tuesday.

Costs for Progress Energy’s two news reactors proposed for Levy County have surged to between $19 and $24 billion, and the first unit could come online almost three years after initially planned, the company said in a statement on Monday. The North Carolina–based company had previously said the first unit at Levy would enter service in 2021 at an estimated cost of $17 billion to $22 billion.