About This Blog

The purpose of this blog is two fold

1. to promote active discussion of using decision science methods to improve electric utility asset management decisions
2. to increase awareness of sound scientific methods that can aid electric utility decision making.

This blog currently addresses three areas:

1. Project Portfolio Management,
2. Repair / Replace Decision Making as it applies to existing assets,
3. Utility Fuel Inventory Management.

About Steve Chapel

Industry: Consulting
Occupation: Economic Analyst - Utility Infrastructure Investment Planning
Location: Palo Alto : CA : United States

I manage S.Chapel Associates a private consulting firm that specializes in utility planning and asset management. I have more than 25 years experience in electric utility planning and asset management and specialize in the application of analytic tools to aid engineering - economic decision making, financial valuation, and capital budgeting.

My current focus is on transmission and distribution business planning and asset management with specific emphasis on problems associated with (1) aging electric infrastructure (2) project portfolio management and (3) electric system reliability. I am also a co-author (with Mukund Thapa) of a soon to be published book on programming using C and C++ Pointers.

Recently I published three articles, one on project portfolio management, one on managing aging assets and one on the economics of the "Smart Grid" concept. In addition T&D magazine published an article chronicling my career. You can access these articles via the following links:

Project Portfolio Management Article
Aging Assets Article
Smart Grid Article
A Motorcycle Story, T&D Magazine


My training is applied mathematics, economics and computer science. In recent years I have done extensive software development producing analytic tools to aid asset management decision making (using Java, C/C++, and VB .NET).