Recently in PURPA's legacy Category

Avoided cost. There's a term we don't deal with much nowadays, but there was a time when it was everyday talk in the power industry -- thanks to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, the law that observed its 30th birthday in November, as my colleague Peter Maloney recalled in a post this past Wednesday. He took a look at PURPA in our weekly publications, and will explore it and its progeny more in the coming months. At any rate, way back when, PURPA regulations made qualifying power facilities get paid amounts linked to utilities' avoided costs.

In the 1980s we even published something called Avoided-Cost Quarterly. Not everyone can say that. But the term is being used in a different context now.

PURPA turned 30 this month -- President Jimmy Carter signed it November 9, 1978 -- but is this any kind of celebration?

The publicly traded merchant power generators -- companies that grew out of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act and the energy acts that followed it through the years -- are mostly posting strong earnings on a cash basis, but their stocks have been battered. Some are cheaper than a latte, as the saying goes.