Word: grids
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...past seven months, B.C. Hydro has earned more than $700 million by selling power to energy-starved U.S. buyers--more than twice the $290 million earned from U.S. sales in the previous fiscal year. But this bounty hasn't come worry free. The intricate Canada-U.S. grid that links energy producers and consumers--and that makes it so profitable for B.C. Hydro to transmit power south--is in growing disarray. The consequences could be even higher prices and more uncertain supplies for Canadians as well as Americans. "We need a stable energy system on the continent," says Ray Hart...
...grown nearly 25% since 1995, far in excess of the state's relatively small additions to capacity. (By contrast, Texas has built 22 new plants since 1995, with 15 more scheduled to come online within a year.) That forces California's Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages the power grid, to find some 6,000 megawatts a day outside the state...
...wholly integrated, five-state trading market, including New Jersey and Maryland, that has effectively managed the high-wire balancing act of swapping power. "Electricity is like an ecological system. You can't do one thing without affecting everything else," says Phil Harris, CEO of PJM Interconnection, which manages the grid. "It has to be a regional solution...
...practice, of course, it has been a whole lot messier. The nation's old, Balkanized transmission grid isn't built to handle so much long-distance traffic. And freshly liberated markets won't necessarily attract new suppliers because the cost of entry--a multibillion-dollar power plant--is high. So real competition is, by and large, harder to find. "If deregulation is a good idea, and it still may be, it needs to be implemented when you have the infrastructure in place," says James Bernstein, commerce commissioner of Minnesota, which still has a regulated electricity system and may have...
There is one exception to that rule, and it's Texas. Alone among the states, Texas operates its own electricity grid, which makes it less vulnerable to the various bottlenecks in the national system; it imports less than 1% of its power. Like Pennsylvania, Texas didn't require utilities to sell off their plants, and it didn't outlaw long-term contracts. Says state senator Steve Wolens, who co-authored the deregulation bill: "We learned in California that you can't deregulate and keep the government's fist around the market's throat...