Designing a Profitable Performance-Based Ratemaking Plan
October 1, 2002
Performance standards constitute only one dimension of performance-based regulation (PBR). Utilities that are contemplating PBR must also devote serious attention to the details surrounding the ratemaking mechanisms that will control their distribution rates. Should a utility propose a price cap or a ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-6 | Author: Victoria Mandell
The Skinny on Distribution Automation
March 1, 2002
Although distribution automation offers many advantages and has recently seen improvements in functions and communication abilities, opinions differ on whether distribution automation provides the return on investment necessary to pursue it. E source looks at a number of successful distribution automation ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-5 | Author: Lew Rubin
Strategies for Aging Distribution Infrastructure
November 1, 2001
Aging electric distribution infrastructure presents managerial, budgetary, and performance challenges that could potentially strain the most cost-efficient utility. Many traditional planning, operating, and managerial prioritization methods still in use today by electric utilities are incompatible with ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-4 | Author: Ron Davis, Kristen Bertolone
Pardon the Interruption: A Look at Outage Management Systems
May 1, 2001
Extensive or extended service interruptions can upset customers and bring unwanted attention upon electric distribution utilities from politicians and regulators. Enter the outage management system (OMS), which keeps restoration-critical information flowing in real time among a utility’s call center, ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-3 | Author: Lew Rubin
Lessons in Remedial Reliability: ComEd and the Outages of the Summer of 1999
April 1, 2001
In this report, we examine the power outages in Chicago that made national news during the summer of 1999. Although the consumer and regulatory responses to these outages were extreme, the experience of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) marks an important case study of the priority that a distribution company ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-2 | Author: Ron Davis, Carolyn Dunmire
Buying and Selling Infrastructure Services
November 1, 2000
Successful businesses formulate strategies around core competencies, investing in activities where they have a competitive advantage and outsourcing functions where they do not. This report examines how electric distribution companies are making strategic business decisions based on their self-assessed ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-1 | Author: Ron Davis
Distributed Generation for Delivery System Capital Deferral: A Small Market with a Large Impact?
September 1, 2000
Much of the recent interest in distributed energy was born out of utility efforts in the early 1990s to defer capital upgrades for their transmission and distribution systems. Though it sagged during the focus on restructuring in the electric power industry through the 1990s, interest in using local ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: DE-12 | Author: Daniel Engel, Christine Hurley, Nicholas Lenssen
Performance-Based Regulation: Profiting from Service and Cost Savings
February 1, 2000
Parallel with industry restructuring, regulators are redefining their role as proponents of performance-based regulation (PBR), which seeks to improve service and lower prices to consumers in exchange for potentially higher utility profits. Performance measures, especially those assessing customer service ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-00-3 | Author: Ron Davis
A Snapshot of Reliability After Restructuring: New Solutions on the Horizon?
May 1, 1999
The rapid evolution of competitive power markets is putting strains on the operation of electricity transmission systems that will require new institutional and technological systems to ensure reliability of power supplies. In the area of distribution reliability, regulators are beginning to move ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-99-6 | Author: Rita Renner, James Newcomb, Adam Capage
Strategies for Emerging Distribution Companies
March 1, 1999
A new class of activist distribution companies is emerging with a strategic vision of creating super-regional or even global distribution operations. Some of these players are pursuing economies of scale through mergers and acquisitions with other distribution companies, the purchase of delivery networks ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: SIP XII | Author: James Newcomb, Adam Capage
The Future of Energy Distribution Companies: E Source Executive Roundtable
February 1, 1999
E Source recently convened a roundtable discussion on the future of energy distribution companies with a group of 25 senior executives from North American electric and gas utility companies. The participants explored some of the strategic questions now facing distribution companies as competitive ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-99-3 | Author: James Newcomb
Military Utility Privatization: A Good Tactic for Distribution Companies?
November 1, 1998
The U.S. Department of Defense is actively trying to sell or outsource the operation and maintenance of the electric, gas, water, and wastewater systems on virtually all of its military bases over the next several years. This drive to privatize military utility networks presents a huge opportunity ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-98-8 | Author: Steven Allenby
The Distributed Utility
June 1, 1997
The electric utility industry is becoming more decentralized as a result of competitive restructuring and the rapid evolution of technology in such fields as information, communication, controls, and small-scale power generation and storage. The centralized, hierarchical structure that has characterized ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: SIP IX | Author: Graham Hodge and Michael Shepard
