How To Get Next Generation Of Plants Built Is the Question
The U.S. electric-power industry is stuck in the middle of a messy transition to a competitive system and groping for clarity in business models and generation technologies, John Rowe told the Electric Power conference April 5 in Chicago. "Were constantly experimenting in this country with mixed models of competition and regulation," he said. "The big question now is, how will the next generation of powerplants be built?"
Chicago-based Exelon Corp.s chairman, president and CEO sees "three different models of how to do business, none of which seems to be working." In the Southeast, vertically integrated utilities operate with little retail competition and modest wholesale competition. Statewide integrated-resource systems such as Californias are another model, and systems elsewhere, with substantial wholesale competition and largely unused rights to retail competition, are a third. Questions remain about what kinds of generation must be built, when, who will build it, how it will be financed and under what kinds of regulation, he said.