In earlier articles and essays I explained that the sales of public franchises for private gain, undisciplined by effective competition, produced a concentrated, complicated industry no one intended. Repeated 80 times over 30 years, electricity mergers have wasted economic resources, diverted value from customers to shareholders, weakened competitive forces and intensified intra-corporate conflict. Let’s start with economic waste[…]

State commissions are seeing more filings: rate cases, requests for pre-approvals, corporate restructurings. Commissions also are instigating proceedings themselves: carbon reduction options, transmission construction, and renewable energy. Staff sizes are dropping due to retirements and hiring freezes[…]

Washington State, that is. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission has rejected the proposed acquisition of Avista (formerly Washington Water Power) by Hydro One, the government-controlled utility serving in Ontario, Canada. The Commission’s December 2018 Order emphasized two problems[…]

The U.S has 50 sovereign states, five inhabited territories and 3.8 million square miles, with 320 million people and plenty of political differences […]

Due to generation shortages in transmission-constrained areas, PJM capacity auctions were producing high wholesale prices in Maryland. The Maryland Commission designed a three-part solution: (1) Select through competition a wholesale generator to serve in the constrained area. (2) Order Maryland’s […]

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld FERC’s Order 745.1 That order requires operators of wholesale energy markets to treat demand side bids comparably to generation bids. Comparable treatment requires that demand side bidders (a) be allowed to compete with generators […]