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Biofuels: The Promise of the Next Generations

Feb 10 2010 - 1:00 PM Eastern - Your location

The second wave of biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol, algae and others bypass the food vs. fuel controversy and are on the cusp of commercialization. This webinar will review the latest developments in the advanced biofuel space with leading companies more...

Conducting a distributed chorus

Feb 17 2010 - 12:00 Eastern - Your City

Join Intelligent Utility managing editor Kate Rowland, along with a panel from PHI including Rob Stewart, manager of technology evaluation and implementation, and Todd McGregor, AMI director, for an interactive discussion about this company's work to build a more intelligent more...

21st Century T&D: Building the Transmission Piece of Smart Grid

Feb 18 2010 - 12:00 Eastern - Your City

Join industry leaders and Marty Rosenberg, Editor-in-Chief of EnergyBiz magazine, for an interactive discussion about the critical relationship between transmission and distribution (T&D) investment and smart grid success. As the energy enterprise gets smarter toward the consumer end with smart more...

Transforming the Electrical Grid: Addressing Transformation Strategies to Implementing A Smart Grid

Feb 25 2010 - 3:00-4:00pm Eastern - Your City

This webcast should be attended by those individuals that are responsible for identifying, planning and evaluating Smart Grid solutions, including those that empower and engage consumers and are easily assimilated with existing or new technology and business processes. more...

Smart Grid Revolution

Feb 18 2010 - Feb 19 2010 - AUSTIN, TX - USA

ACI's Smart Grid Revolution February 18-19, 2010 A two day strategic event bringing together utility professionals, government & state officials & consultants involved in deployment of the smart grid. To learn strategies which will improve energy efficiency programs & operations, more...

EnergyBiz Leadership Forum 2010: Energy's Emerging Architecture

Feb 28 2010 - Mar 2 2010 - Washington, DC

In 2009, a global economic meltdown collided with an energy crisis to turn the world on its ear. In the United States we've witnessed an unprecedented spending on energy resource development and infrastructure. As a result, a new energy architecture more...

CERAWeek 2010

Mar 8 2010 - Mar 12 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

CERAWeek, IHS CERA's 29th Executive Conference, is recognized as a leading forum offering insight into the energy future. Each year senior policymakers, energy and power executives, and financial and technology leaders from over 55 countries engage with CERA experts in more...

2nd Annual Thin Film Solar Summit Europe

Mar 17 2010 - Mar 18 2010 - Berlin Germany

The conference will provide a comprehensive analysis of the thin film industry and its key challenges in an interactive manner. Leading companies will share their experiences through panel debates and high-level presentations. A great opportunity to network with the whole more...

Gas and Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Feb 24 2010 - Feb 25 2010 - New York, NY - USA

Gas and Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the natural gas and electric industries. Position yourself for career success by gaining a solid understanding of how each business works, including key physical, market and regulatory aspects, as well more...

Gas Business Understanding Seminar

Mar 1 2010 - Mar 2 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Gas Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the natural gas industry. Position yourself for career advancement by gaining a solid understanding of how the gas business works including key physical, market, and regulatory aspects and how market participants navigate more...

Electric Business Understanding Seminar

Mar 3 2010 - Mar 4 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Electric Business Understanding provides a comprehensive overview of the electric industry. Position yourself for career advancement by gaining a solid understanding of how the electric business works including key physical, market, and regulatory aspects and how market participants navigate this more...

Gas Market Dynamics Seminar

Mar 3 2010 - Mar 4 2010 - Houston, TX - USA

Gas Market Dynamics offers participants an in-depth understanding of North American natural gas markets and how they function. Enhance your career by furthering your knowledge of market structure, supply and demand, services offered in gas markets, and how various participants more...

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How Regulators, Utilities Can Team Up to Advance BPL
3.15.05   John Egan, Director, E SOURCE

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    When Laura Chappelle, a Michigan utility regulator, speaks to utility companies about broadband over power lines (BPL) technology, she invokes a powerful scene from the movie “Jerry McGuire.”

    No, it’s not the “Show me the money!” scene that has become a staple of our culture. Instead, it is the quieter but equally powerful scene where Tom Cruise, playing a sports agent, tries to break through the defense mechanisms erected by the high-maintenance football star played by Cuba Gooding Jr. “Help me help you,” implores Cruise of Gooding, who was holding out for a better contract. “I can’t get this done by myself.”

    How fitting. In the same way that Cruise and Gooding overcame their differences to become an unbeatable team, Chappelle and some of her peer utility regulators want to team up with utility companies to accelerate the deployment of BPL technology. But this promising and exciting technology will remain in the lab, and never make it to market, unless both utility-company leaders and utility regulators rethink the traditional “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach that has generally characterized relations between regulators and utilities for a century.

    Some might say, “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a charitable characterization. A less charitable one might be, “the mushroom treatment,” in which each side keeps the other in the dark and feeds them manure.

    Chappelle is working to change that. A commissioner with the Michigan Public Service Commission, she chaired a six-member NARUC task force that assessed three specific aspects of BPL during 2004 – technology, security, and regulatory issues. The task force released its “White Paper” on BPL at the NARUC Winter meeting in Washington, D.C., in mid-February.

    One of Chappelle’s colleagues on the task force, New Jersey utility regulator Connie Hughes, aptly summarized a critical take-away from the task force’s work on regulatory issues: “None of this is particularly difficult, but none of it is going to be easy.”

    What’s not difficult is that there are existing laws and policies that could be applied to many regulatory issues associated with BPL, such as utility business models, codes of conducts, affiliate transactions, cost allocations, cross-subsidies, and the like. What’s not going to be easy is trying to advance BPL using a fresh approach to utility regulation, one that tries to unwind a century of deeply embedded beliefs and practices that have tended to retard innovation, punish risk-taking, engender finger-pointing, and ultimately waste vast sums of time and money.

    One of the NARUC BPL task force’s recommendations is disarmingly simple: More frequent and better-quality communication between regulators and utilities on BPL technology itself and utilities’ still-evolving ideas for deploying it. It sounds like a “Duh!” recommendation, so obvious that it need not be stated.

    One might think that a technology that has the potential to generate tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue as well as cut wasteful capital, operations, and maintenance spending by utilities by an equivalent amount, would be Topic 1 for discussions between regulators and utilities. These discussions would be followed in short order by joint workshops, conferences, tours, regular reports on the status of pilot programs, and a shared high level of enthusiasm to redesign regulatory procedures and business processes to remove obstacles to BPL’s deployment.

    There are a few utilities—including Cinergy, Duke, and Hawaiian Electric – that have practiced “full disclosure” on BPL with their regulators. However, research conducted by Platts strongly suggests that the practices of these BPL leaders are the exception, not the rule. In fact, to the extent they have thought about BPL and regulators at all, many utilities continue to follow the traditional “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach on the subject of BPL and regulators.

    Laura Chappelle confirmed this when she addressed nearly 200 utility officials, vendors, and BPL service providers at the recent winter meeting of the United Power Line Council, a trade group dedicated to advancing BPL. She has seen widely circulated maps showing that nearly 50 utility companies have launched BPL pilot programs. But when she called some of her peer regulators in those states, they were surprised to learn that utilities in their jurisdiction had launched a BPL pilot. The regulators, in too many cases, were the last to know of a jurisdictional utility’s interest in BPL.

    The best way to accelerate the deployment of this advanced technology and begin to capture its potentially enormous benefits is to engage in that quaint, quintessentially Old Economy practice of regular, direct, honest, face-to-face communication between regulators and utilities. Utility executives unable or unwilling to stop playing “don’t ask, don’t tell” with their regulators should instead begin preparing explanations for their Boards of Directors about the huge potential revenue gains and efficiency improvements that they let get away.

    For information on purchasing reprints of this article, contact Tim Tobeck ttobeck@energycentral.com.
    Copyright 2010 CyberTech, Inc.
     
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