Features

Tweeting for Customers
Southwest Airlines uses it to update customers on airline delays. H&R Block uses it to respond to customer concerns. Last summer, then-presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama used it to announce his running mate to 200,000-plus followers. Twitter, the micro-blogging service that allows users to send 140-character posts (known as "tweets") to a group of followers is gaining serious traction in business and politics. It would be easy to write off Twitter as the latest social media fad appealing to only twentysomethings, but several municipal utilities are already using Twitter and numerous others are considering it.

Large-Scale Efficiency
Public power utilities are helping their commercial and industrial customers save energy and money

Paying Customer-Generators
"Net metering" is the term used to describe the transaction between an electric utility and its customer when the customer sells surplus electricity to the utility. It is not a widespread practice, but the growing use of roof-mounted photovoltaic panels and other technologies that allow a customer to generate electricity will change that. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires investor-owned electric utilities to consider offering net metering to their customers by 2008.

The Nexus of Electricity and Water
In the dry southwestern region of the United States, water has always been a precious, sparse resource. Elsewhere in the country, however, it has historically been plentiful, and its casual use has reflected that plenty.

Lone Star Leaders
Texas utility has women at the helm of its three major generating facilities

Regulatory Resurgence?
Now is an especially appropriate time to revisit and underscore the strengths of the independent regulatory commission model that has stood us in such good stead for over a century. Regretably, we have strayed from its central elements—independence from political intervention and comprehensive and sustained oversight of the business sectors that are its purview.

Goodbye Incandescents
Like ordinary incandescent light bulbs? In 2012, it'll become harder to get them when the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 kicks in. The act does not ban incandescents, but it does require that they use lower wattage to produce the same amount of light. The 100-watt bulb will disappear in 2012, the 75-watt in 2013, and the 60-watt bulb in 2014.

Trinity County's Winding Road to Broadband
Trinity Public Utilities District's journey in acquiring high-speed Internet service has followed a winding course much like the mountainous roads that snake through this rural area in Northern California. Though the path has wound around numerous obstacles, the road may have become a bit smoother when President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009. The legislation allocated $7.2 billion for grant and loan programs to stimulate the development of broadband infrastructure and services. That piece of legislation gives Trinity County's leaders hope.

Departments

Perspective
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act provides $4.5 billion to invest in the nation's electricity grid and has spurred tremendous interest in developing a smart grid. Indeed, the smart grid was a major focus of the APPA Engineering & Operations Conference in Austin, Texas, in March and it will be a frequent discussion topic at our upcoming National Conference in Salt Lake City this month.

10 Questions
Tom McLoughlin is CEO of National Public Finance Guarantee Corp., a new unit of MBIA, Inc. He previously headed MBIA Insurance Corp.'s Global Public Finance Division. Jeanne LaBella interviewed him on May 4, 2009.

For Governing Boards
The City Council in Gardner, Kan., voted last September to establish a new Electric Utility Board to oversee the city's electric utility, becoming only the fourth municipal electric utility in Kansas to establish a separate board to regulate the utility. The action followed the council's examination of continued ownership of the electric utility.

Safety
On Feb. 3, 2009, an explosion inside a We Energies coal dust silo in Oak Creek, Wis., rained flames down on a group of contract workers who were preparing to start some scaffolding work. The silo was one of nine owned by the utility to collect coal dust that accumulates from the coal that is brought to the plant by train. The dust is compacted in the bins and then used for fuel, just as the coal is.

Green Energy
In May 2008, the city of Palo Alto, Calif., launched a program to promote solar water heaters by offering rebates of up to $1,500 for qualifying residential installations and up to $75,000 for qualifying commercial installations. With this, Palo Alto became the first municipally owned gas utility in the state with a permanent rebate program for the installation of solar water heaters.

Parting Shot
Sun rise, sun set—Replacement sewer pipes along a power corridor in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., offer an elongated view of dusk.