Richard Kauffman, a former partner in Goldman Sachs' Global Financing Group, made two public appearances here this week to pitch the governor's still-fresh vision for a major overhaul of how electricity is bought, sold and delivered in the state.
That plan, called REV for "Reforming the Energy Vision" and just announced last month, has already been likened to state and federal power market restructuring efforts in the 1990s that unbundled generation from transmission and distribution to prod open the once-monopolistic behemoth to competition.
But this time, potential changes to how the industry conducts business appear to be even more dramatic, as renewable energy and energy storage costs continue to drop, smart grid technologies blossom, demand response tools vie for footing, and the massive transportation sector looks to plug into the grid to make vehicles go.
Some have started calling the changes to come "Restructuring 2.0" as utilities, independent power producers, consumers and new players enter into a future with less hard infrastructure, more microgrids, fewer baseload power plants, and more customer choice and control over how power gets consumed -- not to mention potentially less guaranteed revenue for the utilities that count on ratemakers to ensure their bottom line.
Cuomo has floated REV, still very much a concept, as a means to get ahead of these changes on a quick timeline, with regulators here charged with completing the plan by early next year. Kauffman is in many ways the brains behind this operation and brings decades of experience in finance -- in other words, outside-the-box thinking -- to a complex industry that hasn't always been willing to embrace innovation.
N.Y. Energy Czar Sheds More Light on 'Restructuring 2.0'
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