kiplinger connection
Electric Blues • Business Tech • Sports Business

Electric Blues: Utilities are in the hot seat, and plug-in cars will add to the problem.
Business Tech: Software providers are wooing customers with Web-setup services.
Sports Business: New stadiums drive up baseball attendance, spurring stadium demand.

Electric Blues
As climate and energy worries grow ... forging consensus among politicians, consumers, and businesses to start tackling global warming and reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil ...
Utilities will be in the hot seat,pressured to produce more electricity
while trimming fossil fuel emissions.
Emissions are just part of the problem.
Demand for power continues to hum, threatening to overwhelm the shaky power grid. There are barely enough big power generators and transmission lines to meet peak demand.
Plug-in hybrid cars mean more stress on the system. With General Motors and others betting big on them, odds are electric autos are here to stay. If 20% of cars on the road in 2020 were plug-ins, electricity needs to power them would increase by around 5%.

Clean coal plants are years away. They won’t be ready until at least 2012.
Ditto, more nuclear power facilities.
Investors remain jittery. Despite faster regulatory approvals, Wall Street continues to view large-scale power plant projects warily. Many utilities still have weakened credit ratings ... fallout from Enron. The not-in-my-backyard syndrome plus uncertainty over the specifics of coming state and federal emissions regs are also delaying projects.

In any case, there’s a huge risk of blackouts for years to come. The U.S. power supply cushion, currently 15% or 16% of daily consumption, on average, is the minimum to cover possible summer spikes in use. The power cushion will likely shrink to a measly 11% or so by mid-2011.
The most vulnerable areas for power shortages: The Rocky Mountain states as well as Texas plus areas served by the Tenn. Valley Authority.
Regions with the best supply: The Deep South as well as the Northwest and New York state.

Moving power around the country is dicey because of transmission line constraints. Moreover, major transmission line upgrades are just getting under way, nearly four years after cascading blackouts in the Northeast and the Midwest illuminated the need for them.

Business Tech
If your small business is looking to bolster its Web presence ...
You’re in luck. Microsoft, Yahoo, Concentric, and others are dangling sweet deals to woo customers to their Web-hosting services.
Microsoft offers free Web hosting with its Office Live program. It also helps smalls buy ad space on search engines and track visitors to their sites. For $19.95 a month, companies can use additional tools that’ll make their Web sites interactive and collect e-mail addresses.
Yahoo just cut its price to $9 a month for Web hosting ... putting firms’ Web sites on its servers and linking them to the Internet. It also offers a slew of features and more storage space than Microsoft.
And Concentric will even help you market your company Web site as part of the $13.50-a-month package that includes many other features.

Sports Business
New stadiums will boost Major League Baseball attendance in coming years. Getting new ballparks: The Washington Nationals, Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics, New York Mets, and New York Yankees.
A labor agreement is also a big plus. It eliminates disincentives for small-market teams to offer higher salaries to top performers. By attracting better players, teams such as the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals have a better shot at winning and drawing fans.