Dr. Debs' Column
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 The current economic crisis has given "deregulation" a bad score and the government is now working hard to "regulate." The banking industry is being partially nationalized to avoid the suspected collapse of our financial system. Amazingly, this is happening just over 10 years after major parts of the US introduced deregulation and restructuring in electricity markets on a large scale. This experience in the power industry had major ups, downs and setbacks, but thanks to cool heads and the availability of good options the clock was not rolled back to the full regulation days. More...Wednesday, May 21, 2008 We need to focus on the transition to sustainable development, but through economic hard times. In the past few months I had been visiting the Gulf area rather regularly, mainly to teach classes as you can determine from the training schedule. I was in Dubai, Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) and also Qatar—all major beneficiaries of the big boom due to high oil prices. Interestingly enough, Dubai does not produce oil or gas, but is booming because of the remarkable policies of its government. These policies have taken advantage of its location, the vast wealth around it, and in advancing a liberal social agenda. Dubai’s neighbors are quickly copying her model and are advancing fast as well. Last year alone, Gulf area oil and gas exports amounted to almost half a trillion dollars. The dilemma, as well expressed in a recent issue by The Economist, is how to spend these monies effectively and creatively! One significant investment is going to be the project for Masdar City which is "a global cooperative platform for open engagement in the search for solutions to some of mankind's most pressing issues: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development." With a budget of $22 Billion, this city will be a fully sustainable environment. But what is more, it is planned to be a true hub for R&D, investment projects, and actual manufacturing of promising sustainability systems and technologies. More...Monday, April 02, 2007 At long last, renewable energy production in the USA is catching up with Europe and the rest of the world. Having been blessed with low energy prices, mainly because of low taxes and a policy of over dependence on cars and trucks for transportation, we are now waking up to the need to push hard toward achieving quick progress in this area. The sad thing is that we are repeating the 1970’s scenario, a scenario caused by the 1973 oil crisis and the rise of OPEC. The incredible increase then of oil prices from $2/Barrel to $11/Barrel was considered a huge jump. But with today’s oil prices in the $60/Barrel price range, we are not far from that of the 70’s prices, after we account for inflation. In short, oil prices are actually still low by that standard and the possibility of sharp increases are inevitable. More...Saturday, October 01, 2005 As I was poised to celebrate with 30 Korean engineers and staff the ending of their one-month training program (see Press Release on KPX Training Session) it occurred to me that when I was a professor at Georgia Tech, we covered roughly 150 lecture hours to allow our students to get their Masters degrees. With our participants from Korea, we covered about 100 lecture hours. More...Sunday, May 01, 2005 Of course one is reminded by the ENRON and other related fiascos in the electricity business (see my column two years ago on this issue). Already FERC has issued guidelines on professional ethics "code of conduct" situations. This matter raises three main concerns in my mind. More...Wednesday, December 01, 2004 2004 has become the year of hands-on training! There is no question that NERC (North American Electric Reliability Council) has become very serious about dispatcher training. More...Sunday, February 01, 2004 August 14, 2003 was just a start! It was followed by blackouts in London, Copenhagen and all of Italy. And almost everyone blamed market deregulation as the main culprit. More...Sunday, December 01, 2002 Not only did Enron collapse in 2002, but with it down came other players – Mirant, The Williams Company, Dynergy, and others. More...Friday, November 01, 2002 During the week of November 11 I had the opportunity to teach the DSI course, "Investment and Trading in Electricity Markets," in San Francisco, California. More...Tuesday, October 01, 2002 The experiences shared on this month’s Press Release whereby I engaged heavily in the hand-on training of the engineers on the use of ANNSTLF (Artificial Neural Networks Short Term Load Forecaster) taught me some important lessons! More...Sunday, September 01, 2002 Last June I had the good opportunity to be a guest speaker at the Second Balkan Power Conference held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (June 19-21, 2002). Aside from the "nostalgic" opportunity to finally visit my long-time friend and colleague, Professor Milan Calovic, I was very favorably impressed by Belgrade. More...Thursday, August 01, 2002 The recent movie, "A Beautiful Mind" based on the life of John Nash, the great game theory guru, has illustrated eloquently the pitfalls of classical economic theory with its conclusions on "perfect competition." More... |
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