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YOU KNOW WE LIVE IN TRANSFORMATIONAL times when the governor of a Midwest industrial state scrambles to Washington to address a group of energy industry leaders gathered to discuss America's looming energy revolution.“The winners of the 21st century energy economy are being chosen today,” Ohio's Gov. Ted Strickland told attendees of the second EnergyBiz Leadership Forum in early March.Clearly,...
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EUROPE'S UTILITY REGULATORY MODEL IS now unfolding. But the process hasn't been an easy one as commissioners there have wrestled with how to dislodge national interests.For more than a year now, the European Commission has forced utilities to legally separate their generation assets from their transmission lines. The goals have been to increase the opportunities for alternative and greener energy...
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Utility Snapshot
DIVERSE FACTORS ARE SHAPING the future of utilities worldwide. In Russia, the foreign investment climate is warming. However, investors are still concerned about political stability and regulatory certainty.Russia is the leading natural gas producer globally. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Russia possesses 27.5 percent of the world's gas supply. About half of its own...
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FROM LINEMEN TO FIELD TECHNOLOGISTS
THE WICHITA LINEMAN MAY STILL HAVE A job in the utility of the future, but he won't be driving alone down the main road searching for an overload. He, or she, will be part of a mobile unit dispatched by a computer that identified a problem as soon as it occurred and may be called something like a “field technologist.”More to the point, that lineman won't be the iconic symbol for the power...
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Dealing with Attrition
WORKFORCE ATTRITION is threatening the future of the energy industry. We've all heard the good news. Work to complete construction of Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar unit 2 is under way. The Federal government has earmarked $8 billion in loan guarantees to support development of two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. For the first time in decades, America will be building nuclear power...
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TROUBLED WATERS AHEAD
CONSUMER ELECTRIC RATES ARE GOING TO have to go up because of pressures on utilities to change radically in a short time frame, say the leaders of five co-operative utilities from across the United States interviewed in an EnergyBiz Leadership Roundtable recently at the annual meeting of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Atlanta.Despite those concerns, the executives all...
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POSSIBLE HARBINGER OF MERGER TREND
IF FIRST ENERGY'S CURRENT BID FOR Allegheny Energy is successful, it would be a good sign other utility mergers are likely to follow. But it's not likely that those that follow would attract as much attention because this get-together of First Energy and Allegheny is going to produce a real whopper. The consolidation is going to create one of the largest energy providers in the Midwest and Mid-...
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FROM BIOMASS TO UTILITY POLE MOUNTED SOLAR
LONG BEFORE CARBON CAP-AND-TRADE OR RENEWABLE energy mandates became part of the utility lexicon, California was out in front developing green energy. California is still way out in front in one important way, but there are plenty of followers, with utilities everywhere building and buying renewable energy assets from coast-to-coast.With mandates for renewable energy in 29 states, California is...
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A CONVERSATION WITH MARTHA WYRSCH, VESTAS AMERICAS USA CEO
WIND POWER TURBINES CONTINUE TO SPROUT ACROSS the American landscape. One Johnny Appleseed of a firm, Vestas of Denmark, is doing much of the planting. To understand the company and its ambitions, EnergyBiz recently interviewed Martha Wyrsch, chief executive of Vestas Americas USA, in her Portland, Ore., riverfront office. The 52-year-old Wyrsch, a veteran of the natural gas sector, was named to...
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EXPANDING THE FOOTPRINT
GEOTHERMAL ELECTRICAL GENERATION IS A BASELOAD renewable energy source that uses heat from the earth to create electricity. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the geothermal industry has the potential to generate 39,000 megawatts of electricity in the United States using existing technologies.Today, 144 projects estimated to be under development in the United States are projected to...
