Weather-related risk is keeping insurers up at night. The bill to clean up Hurricane Sandy along the East Coast came in at a staggering $70 billion, but government and private insurers were able to cobble the funds together. However, an even more serious disaster or series of disasters could shred the social safety net, permanently… Keep reading →
Post Hurricane Sandy, an influx of electricity workers from various parts of the country came to the New York/New Jersey area to help in the recovery process and to restore power in the region to nearly 10 million people left in the dark. Sandy caused massive flooding of power substations and corrosion of key electrical… Keep reading →
NY state commission asks feds to look into “troubling” relationship between utility and key consultant. The Long Island Power Authority, the target of multiple investigations in the wake of its poor response to Hurricane Sandy, may soon be facing investigation by federal prosecutors as well. A special commission appointed by New York Gov. Andrew… Keep reading →
The role of women in business and the role of business in women’s lives has attracted enormous controversial attention in recent months, and it is impossible to put together a list of the top women in energy without giving some thought to why there have traditionally been so few of them. In some regards, the… Keep reading →
All too often, energy conferences and events feel as old as the industry itself – except with smart phones and PowerPoint slides. The standard format can leave participants scanning a room full of people glued to their phones or tablets, while a speaker meanders through a slide presentation, but New York Energy Week is… Keep reading →
East Coast utilities are making big grid investments to prep for a hot and stormy 2013. Fresh on the heels of Hurricane Sandy’s destruction last year, East Coast utilities are girding their grids for future storms, including a 2013 hurricane season that’s shaping up to be a tough one, according to the latest forecasts. That spending… Keep reading →
How many billion of dollars does it take to secure the infrastructure of an energy company against the “known unknowns” of historic storms and other forms of interruption and just as importantly, who should pay?
The Public Service Enterprise Group company of New Jersey (PSEG) had an opportunity to answer that question in real time in the weeks after Hurricane Sandy, a storm that impacted facilities that had never been hit by storms in 50 years of operation and knocked out power to a remarkable 90% of the company’s customers. Since then, the firm knows that “business as usual is not enough,” PSEG CEO Ralph Izzo told the AGRION Energy & Sustainability Summit in a wide-ranging speech opening the second day of the conference in New York City this week. Keep reading →
The language of short-lived sales and low-cost financing is more usually heard around used-car lots and department stores, but there isn’t any reason the same factors can’t apply to the utility business.
The short-term, act-now opportunity open to the power sector in the US is clear in an environment that will dictate significant capital investment, the authors of a new report from consulting firm Booz & Company argue. Keep reading →
Hurricane Sandy presents state and federal officials nationwide with a superb opportunity to think through how to better utilize all their resources in an even worse disaster, says Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Stockton.
And a worse disaster is coming – either from human enemies or from Mother Nature, he warned the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), meeting recently held in Baltimore. Keep reading →
More than two weeks have passed since Hurricane Sandy brought the Eastern Seaboard to a standstill. Although life is slowly returning to normal, Sandy joins a long series of painful reminders of how dependent 21st century America is on reliable electricity: it powers nearly every facet of our lives. The potential silver lining in the wake of Sandy’s devastation is the influx of interest in our outdated and inadequate transmission grid, highlighting long ignored issues from the benefits of buried transmission lines to the importance of an integrated, redundant, resilient grid – built to withstand even Sandy’s fury.
A robust and modern electric grid is also essential for taking advantage of America’s unmatched renewable energy resources. Wind and sunlight cannot be delivered to customers from their best sources – mostly remote areas and offshore – using railcars and pipelines like coal, oil, and gas; they need transmission lines. In the Southeast, where wind and solar are relatively scarce, transmission lines are critical for bringing cheap and abundant renewable resources from other regions. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which provides power to nearly all of Tennessee and other Southeastern areas, is now importing wind power from eight wind farms in the Midwest. Alabama Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company, last year made one of the largest wind purchases ever from producers in Oklahoma. Keep reading →
