It's much the same story for a host of leading companies in the 1000, from third-ranked Toyota Motor to consumer electronics giant Matsushita Electric (No. 9) and utility Chubu Electric (No. 41).
In addition, the electric utility lobby in Washington is extraordinarily powerful, and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), which represents public utility heavyweights like Edison International, Exelon and Constellation Energy Group, is fully behind the department's announcement of "national interest" zones.
When the Rural Electrification Act was passed in 1936, only about 10 percent of rural America had access to utility scale electric power.
FORBES: The Good Grid and why bragging about being "off the grid" is silly
At one panel discussion, Jan Shori, general manager of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the sixth-largest community-owned electric utility in the country, noted the state of California's ambitious goals to reduce carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo called for a radical redesign of the electric utility system in the wake of the post-Sandy electric power outages that kept New York City residents eating dinner by candlelight for the better part of a week in many places.
It could be another natural-gas pipeline or an electric utility, in the U.S. or outside.
These events point to a horrible planning weakness by most electric utility industry participants.
FORBES: Avoiding Japan's Nuclear Disaster - Plan Like Google
Technology and electric utility businesses dominated the list in 2010, when it had 25 of them.
It is everything in the electric utility business, where regulators essentially control company revenues and profit.
There is a better approach: true deregulation of the electric utility industry--generation, transmission and distribution.
What is the difference between an electric utility and a troop of Boy Scouts in the woods?
FORBES: Distributed Energy Is Here To Stay: Why One Utility Thinks This Is Good News
If you look at the track record of the electric utility industry, we are doing that in real time.
They treat banking like an electric utility where if you flip the switch it has to be there for you.
Bernardo oversees the family's other assets including their stake in Banco Bice, where he is president, and electric utility Colbun.
Implementation of this standard and the supporting hardware built to the standard have attracted significant attention in the electric utility industry.
For example, many electric utility companies only learn about power outages because customers call and complain that the lights have gone off.
The most vehement of the three is Metcalf, who has long maintained that electric utility accounting constitutes a ripoff of the consumer.
FORBES: Why Everybody's Jumping On The Accountants These Days
Another electric utility Kramer recommends is Central Vermont Public Service Corp.. The company has good management and a 4.7% yield, Kramer says.
The once-staid electric utility business has been through lots of jolts in recent times: deregulation, the California energy mess, Enron, oil price surges.
As of now, most residential and commercial customers still pay their electric utility a flat rate multiplied by the kilowatt hours they use.
"I talked to the CEO of just about every electric utility in the U.S." says Anderson, now the CEO of BHP Billiton in Melbourne, Australia.
"I talked to the CEO of just about every electric utility in the U.S." recalls Anderson, now chief executive of Melbourne, Australia-based BHP Billiton Group.
Although I am not currently involved in any clean coal projects, I have spent a fair amount of my time in the electric utility industry.
FORBES: Romney Has It Wrong, Coal Is A Sell And Tesla Is A Buy
Allete, a Minnesota electric utility, until last year owned Adesa, when it sold off some shares to the public and distributed the rest to Allete shareholders.
Chile's Chilectra, the electric utility, has its Chilean tariffs set for two more years and is improving efficiency at its Peruvian, Argentine, Colombian and Brazilian subsidiaries.
Chile's Chilectra, the electric utility, has its Chilean tariffs set for two more years and is improving efficiency at its Peruvian, Argentinean, Colombian and Brazilian subsidiaries.
The largest utility, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), recently joined forces with Microsoft and Softbank, a Japanese software and media conglomerate, to offer unmetered Internet access.
To offset the energy-gobbling building boom, the electric utility this month asked Sochi's 343, 000 residents to halt daytime use of air conditioners, teapots, irons and washing machines.
As more plug-in vehicles become available, they are likely to become popular since the Southeast is home to some of the lowest electric utility rates in the country.
"If Thomas Edison came back to life, he'd recognize our electric utility system immediately--and that's not a good thing, " says Jesse Berst, publisher of Smartgridnews.com, in Redmond, Wash.
应用推荐