Please select what you would like included for printing: Copy the text below and then paste that into your favorite email application Francesco “Frank” or “Lib” Dell’Ovo passed away in the comfort of his home surrounded by loving family on Thursday Frank is survived by his loving wife of forty-nine years and Ennio Dell’Ovo of Boston; eight grandchildren and Lincoln “Cheech”; along with many nieces and nephews Vittorio and Antonietta (Monfreda) Dell’Ovo He graduated from North High School and served in the National Guard Frank and his family operated Dell’Ovo’s on Shrewsbury Street for many years before he turned the operations over to his son Anthony in 2014 where the restaurant remains a “go to” place for so many It was there that Frank met many great people and where his love of feeding people and conversing with them was shown daily Frank worked for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette Having grown up in the shadow of Mount Carmel Church Frank was proud of his heritage and remained bound to Shrewsbury Street his entire life and his grandchildren were his pride and joy He could fix anything he set his mind to and loved to cook but for any occasion where he’d be with family and friends He enjoyed “The Wonder of It All” and simply enjoyed a great life Calling Hours and a Funeral Service will be Tuesday in the MERCADANTE FUNERAL HOME & CHAPEL donations in his memory may be made to the Pancreas and Liver Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital Enter your phone number above to have directions sent via text This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information Versione italiana Italy halted all non-essential industry as it navigated the first major outbreak of Covid-19 outside of China With demand for electricity – and its wholesale price – already slumping it looked like a lean moment for the energy business But Roberto Bracco and his power-trading team at Repower AG had spent more than a decade deploying a trading pattern that raked in large sums even on the slowest days Bracco knew his company’s gas-powered generating plant might lose money if it sold electricity into Italy’s regular power market – known as the “day-ahead” because it’s settled a day in advance But he also knew the plant could stay out of that market entirely and perhaps do far better Whenever day-ahead trading fails to yield enough electricity for any particular area must fill the gap by buying power in an ancillary market that’s almost always more expensive had long held strong market power: It’s one of three power plants near Naples that are together crucial for keeping the region’s lights on Teverola disappeared from the day-ahead but offered electricity in the dispatch market at €490 per megawatt hour – roughly 18 times the average day-ahead price on that day Terna accepted Teverola’s offer for 24 hours straight and Repower brought in €1.88 million instead of the €100,840 available in day-ahead according to a Bloomberg News analysis of Italian electricity records What would have been a losing day in the regular market Terna then billed Italian businesses and consumers for all of it more than a dozen Italian power companies – including state-controlled Enel SpA the nation’s largest – deployed the same technique to get the same sort of premiums in the dispatch market There’s nothing illegal about this practice – and Repower and other producers defended it saying they had to avoid losses in the often-volatile and low-paying day-ahead market The day-ahead “has always been the primary market for the sale of the plant’s production,” Bracco said in a statement responding to a detailed list of questions sent to Repower “If and when the production was not sold on the energy market it was only because the margins would have been negative with insufficient revenues to cover the production costs.” Bloomberg’s analysis shows that roughly half of the time when companies collected a dispatch premium the day-ahead market would have been unprofitable – based on a widely accepted industry formula used to determine gas-fired power plants’ hourly generation costs The firms told Bloomberg that the cost-of-production formula doesn’t account for other expenses they face such as transporting gas or using fuel to warm up their plants Enel said its “total relevant costs” include “both variable and fixed management costs (for example operation depreciation and amortization as well as return on capital).” One of three gas plants operated by Tirreno Power It was awarded the most money of any plant in Italy it’s clear – from executives’ celebratory comments during earnings calls as well as simple mathematics – that the dispatch market’s higher prices helped companies do far better than merely avoiding losses dispatch premiums totaled €1.2 billion – or 238% more than companies would have received at the day-ahead price Bracco said he expected to do well in dispatch during lockdown but the magnitude of Repower’s 2020 profits surprised even him “It went above estimates,” the 53-year-old wearing a navy blue Lacoste tennis shirt and white-soled boat shoes said in an interview at Repower’s Milan offices Italian power authorities introduced an attempt at reform Terna now pays many producers an annual fee to guarantee supply while capping dispatch prices at levels linked to production costs Terna spent hundreds of millions more in 2022 via this new “capacity market” than it saved Italy’s experience – as reflected in the glimpse Repower provided into the rarely seen world of power trading – shows that such money-making maneuvers are neither new nor easy to fix Read more from Power Plays a series about the ways consumers lose on energy bills Long before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring Italy’s dispatch market left consumers vulnerable to what regulators have called an electricity “game” that benefits firms with strong market power the dispatch market was intended to apply a competitive free market to the problem of providing enough electricity to fill all of Italy’s needs If traders can choose between one option that offers them tight margins and another that can make them huge sums it’s a sign that the market isn’t perfectly competitive Europe has failed to learn the Enron lesson infamously helped trigger rolling blackouts in California by manipulating its electricity market in 2000 which led to a series of regulatory changes prices and grid stability are hashed out simultaneously as part of the regular market and companies with few competitors face strict limits on what they can ask for a professor of energy policy at the Hertie School in Berlin But European regulators often still use two-step systems that separate the regular market from the tools that grid operators use to secure enough electricity to meet demand power firms can charge whatever the grid operator will pay And the grid operator will pay ever higher prices if the plant has too few competitors “You create perverse incentives for gaming” when these markets don’t operate on a “cost-based regulated basis,” Hirth said Bloomberg News is examining energy markets in Europe and elsewhere. Got a tip or a story to share? Get in touch with us at powerpricing@bloomberg.net more than a dozen Italian market participants schedulers and their counterparts at grid operator Terna described a system that provides lopsided advantages to energy suppliers Traders are like chess players who face the same When certain conditions arise – low demand maintenance issues – they can easily predict what Terna will do Bracco said “there has never been any arbitrage strategy” and noted that Terna decides whether the dispatch market is needed Dispatch is very different from the day-ahead “in terms of size and purpose and it is natural that very different prices can arise between the two.” Terna said in a statement that rising gas prices hampered its efforts to save consumers money via its new capacity market Without the new system – which also provides an incentive for companies to keep power plants online to maintain the network’s security – electricity inflation in Italy would have been even worse “The capacity market prevented the costs of the energy market from rising further.” These changes have taken years to accomplish Italian regulators had been expressing concerns about power companies’ use of the dispatch market for at least a decade Competition authorities investigated multiple firms over alleged abuses during that time One of the first was Repower and Roberto Bracco Energy supply in Italy flows freely in the north where power lines connect in every direction from Turin to Milan to Venice But the rest of the country follows narrow stretches of coast along either side of the mountains that run the length of the “boot,” with fewer generators to call upon Regulators identified these electricity generators as having strong market power in the areas they served In May 2010, a whistleblower wrote to Italy’s competition authority alleging that the firms running Naples’ three major power plants had formed “a cartel aimed at keeping the prices offered for electricity dispatching services high.” none of the three plants had been offering any energy in the day-ahead on Sundays documents from the competition authority’s investigation show That created a need for dispatch power — and in that market the three plants would rotate who made the winning offer the next Napoli Levante and the one after that Teverola The whistleblower alleged that the organizer of the “cartel” was the head of trading at Repower Italia Public documents don’t name any of the employees implicated in the probe but Bracco spoke openly about it with Bloomberg “It started with an anonymous letter,” he said and therefore it was probably someone inside Repower who sent the anonymous letter.” He denies colluding with competitors – though he acknowledges Repower became a frequent participant in the dispatch market under his leadership Repower initially sold its electricity almost exclusively in the day-ahead during hours of peak demand But margins tightened during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009 demand dropped low enough to set prices below Teverola’s costs So Bracco’s team began dropping out of the day-ahead and offering only in dispatch “We kept the plant out if the plant was going to lose money,” he said Italy’s grid first began hooking up wind and solar plants which could undercut gas generators’ prices in the day-ahead But because wind and solar couldn’t turn on and off on command they couldn’t offer their power in dispatch Soon Repower was “principally” earning its money from dispatch investigators dug through emails and found references to contacts among the three companies a Repower employee emailed to ask Bracco what he had learned from the competitor according to the competition authority’s findings the competition authority delivered a ruling: The Naples trio had indeed operated as a cartel between April and August 2010 The authority called their Sunday trading pattern the “hat trick,” a reference to scoring three goals in a soccer match Napoli Levante’s owner Tirreno Power €116,097 and the company running Sparanise €80,389 Tirreno Power called the fine “a minor ‘symbolic’ penalty” and added that Italian regulators did not start “any further investigation” into the matter “therefore recognizing that it was not necessary to modify the market rules.” Sparanise’s owner and that Repower filed an ultimately fruitless appeal as an expression of its innocence the penalty was small compared with the damages that had been originally alleged Under Italian and European Union law, when any company’s market power is especially large, regulators can investigate whether it has engaged in “abuse of dominant position,” including by charging excessive prices. The Italian Competition Authority has wielded the law against drug makers and tech companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google the competition authority and the power regulator Investigators found that Enel and its competitors had helped spike the cost of dispatch in an isolated region in the heel of Italy’s boot that relies heavily on one of its power plants dispatch charges for the area around Brindisi were about €320 million higher than in the year before Enel kept its four-unit Brindisi Sud plant out of the day-ahead market on weekends Soon the region had daily power shortfalls Enel was there offering the same Brindisi Sud electricity for hefty sums “From that moment on the plant was ‘regulated,’ that is operating according to the established rules and remunerations with no more room for anti-competitive behavior,” Rome-based ARERA said in a statement to Bloomberg Enel collected far more in dispatch premiums than any other company a former government-run monopoly that’s now three-quarters owned by private shareholders said “the bidding behavior of a plant should be more properly evaluated by comparing its overall revenues with the total relevant costs.” When most power generators offer in dispatch they “have no way of being certain” that they will be accepted Despite the competition authority’s investigations most power plants – those that didn’t collude with one another and those that weren’t deemed “essential” – were still allowed to freely deploy the same technique: stay out of the day-ahead market then offer power at higher prices in the dispatch market to fill the holes they helped create Terna and ARERA continued looking for ways to bring costs down But they faced a looming danger: Traditional fuel-burning plants were being decommissioned as renewables grabbed market share leading to what Terna called a “strong reduction” in supply over the previous decade this threatened to put consumers at an “unacceptable” risk of blackouts and shortages That’s why Terna introduced its capacity market companies would bid for lump sum payments to guarantee that they would offer supply no matter what their dispatch market prices could never exceed a cap determined by the cost of production New plants coming online would get higher payments which encouraged firms to build new plants in addition to keeping old ones Terna held its first capacity auction to set each bidding company’s fees though the new setup wouldn’t go into effect until the start of 2022 Bracco said the new market seemed better suited to larger firms with more plants his firm’s trading approach hadn’t changed regardless of the decade-old collusion case When Teverola’s prospects in the day-ahead were poor – often on Sundays and other low-demand days – he and his traders kept the plant out a grim and defiant nightly ritual set in across Italy television stations broadcast the government’s announcement of daily death counts while city dwellers leaned out their windows and balconies to sing joining what was becoming a worldwide trend Terna had to go into the dispatch market more often The profits from dispatch would become “much Sunday was the only day of the week where the premium averaged more than half a million euros.. most days averaged more than €800,000 The €1.88 million haul came on a Sunday – March 22 the first day after the industrial lockdown announcement The ensuing Monday and Tuesday were almost as lucrative bringing in €1.6 million and €1.3 million respectively The three plants in the Naples cluster were all making money in the dispatch market ARERA noticed what was going on and warned in a report that summer that clusters of “pivotal” dispatch plants in southern Italy had collective market power that made their service areas “vulnerable” and could turn the dispatch market into “a game repeated infinite times.” ARERA said in a statement that its 2020 findings “immediately required Terna to take prompt action to make all the procedural changes to the market system.” To encourage Terna to make fixes it would receive a percentage of those savings as a bonus payout 2020 had become an unexpected boon for Italian power firms several pointed to dispatch income as a key reason why said it saved the company’s year: “In the face of a drastic general decrease in production the healthy results achieved are mainly attributable to the higher volumes of sales made on the Dispatching Services Market.” Tirreno Power said in a statement that Bloomberg’s reporting doesn’t take “account of what actually happened on the market at the time thus driving to fundamentally flawed conclusions.” With the pandemic’s low demand being largely satisfied by renewable electricity sources gas-fired generators were mainly needed in dispatch “This was an unprecedented and exceptional condition,” Tirreno Power said the firm pointed to how Teverola provided “balancing energy on a targeted basis once again making a substantial contribution to the good corporate results.” Yet for Italians who lost their livelihoods the arrangement meant their power bills didn’t drop noticeably even if they’d kept the lights off for months in their shuttered shops “We have all lived in a situation of crisis and enormous difficulty,” said Alessandra Durando who manages the finances for her husband’s vintage furnishings boutique “There’s someone who’s made a business out of this?” The Teverola plant sits far off a four-lane industrial road the plant’s operation and maintenance manager donned an orange hard hat to walk the grounds which are no larger than a couple football fields Gas flows into the plant through a pipe that enters a hangar-like building two turbines sit side by side making electricity a practically windowless space with an array of 14 computers security camera monitors and light blue walls serves as the control room One screen displays the production schedule while another shows the plant’s output in real time after Terna launched its new capacity market output for the dispatch market immediately crashed the dispatch market is practically dead,” Gentile said On most days in the past year, the power Teverola pumps out has been purchased in the regular day-ahead market. With the dispatch market withered, “the contribution to earnings made by Teverola was way below expectations and the results of previous years,” Repower said when announcing its 2022 results Repower’s Italian business broke even during the first half of 2023 ARERA said in a statement that its capacity incentives “drastically reduced” the problem of high dispatch costs “solving problems that arose and overcoming critical issues that had arisen in previous years.” the new system didn’t save consumers money The dispatch-related expenses that Terna charged to consumers fell by €508 million to €1.92 billion in 2022 But the new capacity market expenses went from zero to €1.2 billion That means that in its first year of operation the new system resulted in a net higher expense of €692 million which Terna passed on to Italians’ power bills Terna noted that the new price caps are tied to the cost of gas which increased significantly in 2022 and drove electricity prices far higher across Europe This cut into how much money could be saved on the dispatch market adding that improvements to its grid and trading strategies also helped cut dispatch costs But the capacity market is not a substitute for a deeper overhaul of the Italian energy market a professor of power systems at the Politecnico di Torino “In the long term you need something else,” including grid upgrades that allow wind power to be stored so it can support the network during times of stress the way gas-fired plants do Expenses fell enough for it to receive €334.7 million in bonuses last year under ARERA’s incentives for trimming dispatch-related costs They buoyed Terna’s bottom line 13.5% to €834.1 million Not all that profit went back into improving Italy’s electricity system The grid operator also boosted its dividend for shareholders by 8% to €632 million Though the government appoints Terna’s CEO the Italian state only owns 18% of the firm putting them in line for the rest of the annual payout About 10% indirectly belongs to the Chinese government Terna charged Italian businesses and residents on their monthly bills just as it did for dispatch costs during lockdown Bloomberg analyzed public data from Gestore dei Mercati Energetici, an Italian state-owned company that operates the country’s power markets. The GME publishes hourly transaction records across markets where electricity is offered and bid, including a regular day-ahead market (MGP) that meets most of the country’s power demand and an ancillary market (MSD) that helps Terna handle congestion on the grid and ensure supply and demand are balanced hourly energy blocks are traded for the day before the power is delivered The MGP market opens on the ninth day before the day of delivery and closes at 12pm the day before delivery The MSD market then opens the day before delivery at 12:55pm and closes at 5:00pm where power producers submit the price and quantity at which they are willing to generate electricity and consuming units submit the price and quantity at which they are willing to buy For each settlement hour and each zone of the grid a clearing price is determined by the intersection of demand and supply curves All the producers who offer a price at or below where the curves intersect Terna acts as the central counterparty and accepts offers directly from producers at the prices offered Prices in the MSD are often multiple times higher than in the MGP when there is congestion or insufficient power on the grid which can occur if producers oversupply or withhold power a publicly-traded company with both governmental and private shareholders then passes the MSD cost to consumers via a special “uplift” fee on their energy bills By comparing the prices and quantities electricity producers offered at each market Bloomberg found a pattern of withholding capacity in MGP and reaping multiple-times-higher prices in MSD To arrive at an estimate of the dispatch premium Bloomberg included only instances when a given producer sold zero power in MGP but then for the same settlement hour on the same delivery day Bloomberg subtracted the zonal MGP price from the MSD price awarded and then multiplied the difference by the quantity of energy awarded Bloomberg’s analysis did not include some other, more sophisticated forms of gaming, such as when generators buy back MGP commitments in the Intra-Day Market in some cases generators sold power below market prices in the MSD for technical reasons Bloomberg subtracted any potential losses in the MSD market from overall figures to arrive at a conservative estimate of dispatch premium To estimate a typical gas-powered generator’s marginal cost of production, Bloomberg considered the historical prices of natural gas and the cost of the European Union’s CO2 emission allowance, using Italian PSV Natural Gas Futures and EUA Futures data provided by the Intercontinental Exchange In consultation with traders and expert researchers in the field we arrived at the following formula that assumes production efficiency of 50% and a CO2 factor of 0.19 for natural-gas burning: Estimated Marginal Cost of Production = ((European Carbon Emission Allowance Futures) * 0.19 + Italian PSV Natural Gas Futures) * 2 commitment and courage of Christopher Columbus…but in so doing we indeed honor the courageous actions of those who brought their Italian culture…along with their families… to seek the American dream and all that is the best of our Nation We gain inspiration by the personal story of Christopher Columbus Columbus Day honors Christopher Columbus the explorer Hundreds of celebrations across America this weekend recognize our Italian heritage This is a time to reflect on the challenges achievements and significant contributions of Italians to our American culture; and take collective pride and patriotism in the genuine and lasting spirit of our Nation whose liberties and freedoms shine as a beacon for the entire world the freedoms we hold dear as Americans were greatly assisted by our Italian American forefathers We as Italian-Americans should take pride in the fact that Our Declaration of Independence bears the signatures of two Italian Americans…William Paca from Maryland and Ceaser Rodney from Delaware; our independence was established and our Nation was formed with the help of three Italian regiments with over 1,500 soldiers that crossed the Atlantic Ocean to fight side-by-side with the American patriots against British rule in the Revolutionary War which at the time was a significant addition to the Continental Army List any and every field of endeavor—-any achievement in our Nation…and Italian-Americans are part of it the success of our Nation has drawn heavily from the industry and resourcefulness of Italian immigrants and their families the same can be said for the values brought by Italians that helped to make us a great Nation The millions who came here brought with them a distinct strength of character a determined sense of personal responsibility and respect that I share a personal story of my family with you As one who loves learning about history…if I could choose to go back in any time to witness personally…I would choose to travel back around a hundred years ago to Sparanise And I would give anything to be seated at the dinner table in their small apartment when my grandfather and grandmother engaged in their discussions with my father and Aunt Madeline to leave the land of their birth; the land where all their families still lived; and discuss what sacrifices they would have to make to rip away from their home and their homeland to build a new life in America my grandfather could come to America and work but needed a steady job and enough financial where-with-all before his family could also immigrate Can you imagine: leaving home; traveling by boat over a 3,000 mile ocean to find work; not seeing your wife your son and daughter for over seven years while you worked long hours in a factory rented room and saved every penny you could to make sure your family would be allowed to join you as soon as possible All this sacrifice to build a better life for your family…a better life for your family in America and courage is the story of my family…and the beautiful story is the history of all our families It is the story replicated millions of times over It is a story that echoes all across this room and all across America…I am sure you all heard your grandfathers and grandmothers tell this story of your family time and again It is the story of us….it is the story we celebrate here today on this Columbus Day…and it is the story that made our Nation strong and true and free The real courage honored today is forged by the spirit of Christopher Columbus that encouraged all those who left their homeland to build a better life for their families by immigrating to America They did not have a sense of entitlement and were not looking for a hand-out They were looking for work in whatever form to pursue the American dream and the opportunity to represent you in the New York State Senate The same pride my Italian grandparents and father felt when they became naturalized American citizens The same pride your own families must have in your personal and professional accomplishments and contributions to your community Our Nation is so much stronger because of the spirit we honor today January 7th 2011 at Notre Dame Long Term Care Center in Worcester William is survived by his wife of 50 years He also leaves many nieces and nephews both here and in Italy and Attorney Mary Italiano all of Worcester; and two brothers Armando Robert Italiano of Worcester and Guido Italiano of North Grafton predeceased him His parents were the late Pasquale and Michelina (DeRosa) Italiano William and his family came to Worcester when he was one year old He attended Belmont School and then Commerce High School graduating in the Class of 1931-B after 3 1/2 years During those years he was a member of the Blackfriars Dramatic Society a violinist in Orchestra A and President of his Class for three consecutive years he graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration specializing in Commercial Education He continued at Boston University and completed his MBA in 1937 He began teaching in the Worcester Public Schools in 1937 at Commerce High School Army Air Corps and was the recipient of the American Theater and Asiatic Pacific Theater Campaign Ribbons After he was discharged in 1946 he returned to teaching In addition to teaching he served as the Principal of the Worcester Evening High School from the 1960’s until 1972 he retired from North High School after 45 years of teaching William worked his entire life as a carpenter and owner of WSI Construction Co He was a member of numerous clubs and organizations For 62 years he belonged to The Sodality of Our Lady on his 50th year anniversary in the Sodality he received an Apostolic Blessing from Pope John Paul II He was also a member the American Legion Eastside Post 201 a founding member of the former ITAM Club and a Charter Member of the West Boylston Lions Club his smile and his fun-filled personality touched everyone he met The family would like to thank the staff and residents of The Notre Dame Long Term Care Facility for creating an environment that allowed William to live his final years in keeping with the way he lived his entire life: fun-filled and surrounded by warm and compassionate people with a Mass at 10:00 in Our Lady of Good Counsel Church January 10th from 4-7 PM at the funeral home memorial donations may be made to the Maffei Capuano Italiano Scholarship Fund at Our Lady of Mt