Electricity

NERC Demands ERCOT Address Declining Reserve Margin Levels

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NERC Demands ERCOT Address Declining Reserve Margin Levels
POWERnews
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid operator that oversees 85% of Texas’ electric load, should consider additional potential solutions to address its worrisome resource adequacy and provide a plan outlining measures it will take to increase woefully low reserve margins, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said in a strongly worded letter last week.

ERCOT in December projected a reserve margin of 13.2% for summer 2013—slightly below ERCOT’s 2010-selected target reserve margin of 13.75%—but it said Texas could see tight power supplies after that. Reserve margins are expected to drop to 10.9% in 2014 and decrease in future years, plunging to 2.8% by 2022.

NERC, an electric reliability organization certified by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to ensure reliability for North America’s bulk power system, expressed concern about…

Small Package Freight

Accessorial Trends & How to Combat Them

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Accessorial Trends & How to Combat Them
By Jerry Lucente                                     www.parcelindustry.com
The biggest difference between accessorials and the surcharges, special service codes, and other fees that the major carriers charge is that, for the most part, they are assessed and applied post-shipment.

Companies can plan and budget for anticipated surcharges and special service codes to certain degrees, but accessorials, which are typically neither applied at the point of manifest nor included in regular invoices, can be extremely difficult to factor into companies’ logistics and supply chain budgets. For this reason and others, they can be major thorns in the sides of supply chain managers and those at the executive level who have to answer for losses that are nearly impossible…