At the NEMA executive committee meeting in Chicago last week NEMA President Craig Goodman revealed that "we're doing serious analysis of functional restructuring, coordinated demand responses at a time when utilities need all the resources they can get to avoid blackouts. It's foolish for them to dissipate all of their credit and capital on more than one function." Functional restructuring? We think Goodman envisions putting all the utility capital into reliability with marketers taking over the risks and merchant functions so that utilities can concentrate money and attention on reliability. Along the same line it's silly to have one competitor that takes risks and another who does not. Under today's lame situation, marketers take risks but the incumbent does not because it can always for back to regulators and ask for more money. More Goodman views below.
