Otter Tail covers a swath of businesses, from electric services and food-ingredient processing to manufacturing equipment, plastics, and health services. Its electric utility and energy activities are subsidiaries of Otter Tail, and its subsidiary Varistar holds Otter Tail's other interests. The electric utility has been the company's core effort since Otter Tail's start in 1907; it keeps the lights on for 129,000-plus residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Otter Tail also makes PVC pipes, wind towers, metal parts, and processes potato flakes, as well as offers diagnostic medical equipment, and construction and trucking services.

CMS Energy Corporation, through its subsidiaries, operates as an energy company primarily in Michigan. It operates in three segments: Electric Utility, Gas Utility, and Enterprises. The Electric Utility segment engages in the generation, purchase, distribution, and sale of electricity. The Gas Utility segment involves in the purchase, transmission, storage, distribution, and sale of natural gas. The Enterprises segment engages in independent power production and marketing. This segment owns power generation facilities fueled mostly by natural gas and biomass. At December 31, 2009, this segment had ownership interests in independent power plants totaling 1,202 gross Megawatt. The company serves individuals and companies operating in the alternative energy, automotive, chemical, metal, food products, and various other industries. As of December 31, 2009, it served 1.8 million electric customers and 1.7 million gas customers. The company was founded in 1987 and is based in Jackson, Michigan.

BKW FMB Energy has been lighting up the lives of the Swiss for more than a century. BKW produces, transmits, and distributes energy to more than 1 million residential and business end users in Switzerland and neighboring countries. The company also trades in energy. BKW operates about 13 hydroelectric plants and one nuclear power plant; it has stakes in another 15 hydroelectric plants, three nuclear power plants, and two plants that generate electricity from wind, solar and biomass sources. The total generating capacity of its plants is 640 MW. The government of the canton of Bern owns more than half of BKW.

Salt River Project (SRP) provides Phoenix with two types of currents: electric and water. Electricity comes from the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, a political subdivision of the State of Arizona that has a generating capacity of about 8,100 MW and distributes power to about 934,000 homes and businesses. The district also sells excess power to wholesale customers. Water comes from the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association, a private firm that delivers almost 1 million acre-feet of water per year to residents and agricultural irrigators; the association also operates dams, canals, reservoirs, and wells in its service area.

Making money by water, Biwater provides water and wastewater treatment services to a range of customers in more than 90 countries. The company also offers water infrastructure investment, consultancy and operation; water asset management; and project management for water leisure facilities. Its Biwater Leisure unit has installed several Olympic-sized pools for almost 40 years. Its international projects include the design and installation of a wastewater treatment plant in Dubai, and a water distribution system for 4.2 million customers in Malaysia. Biwater also designs and builds desalination plants. Focusing on international growth, in 2010 it sold its UK-based Biwater Services Limited unit to MWH Global.

The dryly named electric utility Electric Power Development Co. has a much more fun nickname -- J-POWER. With a generating capacity of 16,380 MW, the company supplies power used all over Japan. It has 67 hydroelectric plants, as well as some thermal and geothermal plants, and owns a transmission network that covers 2,400 km. J-POWER acts as a wholesale electric utility, selling to other electric power companies. Established by the Japanese government in 1952, J-POWER went through the privatization process, finally achieving full privatization and trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2004. The company is also sometimes referred to as EPDC.

Ferrostaal Incorporated is betting on the sun. The company is a subsidiary of the German industrial and heavy construction conglomerate Ferrostaal AG and provides its parent's alternative energy business in North America. It operates, with Solar Millennium, a joint venture called Solar Trust of America (STA) that concentrates on solar power generation. The International Petroleum Investment Company of Abu Dhabi bought a majority stake in Ferrostaal from MAN SE in 2009 and dropped the former parent company's brand from what had been called MAN Ferrostaal.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) doesn't want its name to be mud. One of the largest locally owned electric utilities in the US, SMUD serves about 592,000 residential and commercial customers in California's Sacramento and Placer counties. The utility generates half of its electricity (its 1,300-MW capacity is derived primarily from hydroelectric and cogeneration power plants) and buys the rest. SMUD also sells power to wholesale customers, and has one of the US's largest solar energy distribution systems. SMUD operates more than 10,200 miles of transmission and distibution lines across its 900-sq.-mi. service area.

PNM Resources, Inc. company's primary utility unit, Public Service Company of New Mexico, distributes electricity to nearly 500,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in the state. PNM Resources operates power plants with more than 2,700 MW of generating capacity and markets energy to wholesale customers in the western US. Its Texas-New Mexico Power Company (TNMP) unit provides transmission and distribution services at regulated rates to about retail electricity providers that, in turn, provide retail electric service to 230,000 end users. Subsidiary First Choice Power is a retail electric provider operating in Texas and serving 234,000 customers.

UIL Holdings, parent of electric utility The United Illuminating Company (UI), hopes its well regulated business will result in regular revenue growth. The public utility distributes electricity to 325,000 customers in southwestern Connecticut. Its service area, largely urban and suburban, includes the principal cities of Bridgeport (population 137,000) and New Haven (population 124,000) and their surrounding areas. UIL Holdings has teamed up with NRG Energy to form GenConn Energy LLC, a joint venture that focuses on developing new power generation facilities in Connecticut. In 2010 the company acquired three gas utilies in New England from IBERDROLA USA for $1.3 billion.

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