Solyndra Shakeout Hits the Electric Car Business
Six months after Solyndra’s bankruptcy, the resulting controversy is affecting other companies that were hoping to secure loans from the Department of Energy. Lawmakers want to know whether the DOE loan program has stalled out -- and whether reforms are needed to clarify the mission and the risks for taxpayers.
The CAPX2020 Model - Part II
One of the most ambitious transmission projects in America today is CAPX2020. In this second of two exclusive interviews, Fortnightly's Spark talks with Teresa Mogensen, Xcel Energy’s vice president of transmission, about how the investor-owned utility collaborated with public-power utilities to develop a complex set of lines and a solid investment for shareholders.
The CAPX2020 Model - Part I
One of the most ambitious transmission projects in America today is CAPX2020, a series of lines in Minnesota and surrounding states. In this first of two exclusive interviews, Fortnightly's Spark talks with Will Kaul, Great River Energy’s v.p. of transmission, about how the project has managed to succeed where others have failed.
Cyber War!
The United States is the global superpower of cyber warfare, but we aren’t alone in possessing these capabilities. Sophisticated attacks raise new concerns about utility vulnerabilities -- SCADA systems in particular.
Climate Exposure: Collecting on GHG Damage Claims
A state supreme court ruled last fall that damage resulting from climate change allegedly caused by power plant emissions was “reasonably foreseeable,” and therefore litigation expenses were not covered under a general liability insurance policy. The ruling creates an unworkable standard and raises questions about insurance coverage for climate-change liabilities.
Frequency Regulation: Not Just for Reliability Anymore
In a recent order, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said that by paying the wrong price for the ancillary service known as frequency “regulation,” system operators have encouraged too many gas-fired turbines and other conventional fossil power plants to supply regulation service.
What's Solar Really Worth?
Requests for proposals to supply solar power facilities frequently specify prices to be stated in only one way—dollars per watt DC, or dollars per kilowatt-hour, for example. But a one-dimensional approach to pricing leads to skewed valuation, because different technologies and system designs produce value in different ways.
Did FERC Jump the Gun on Transmission Incentives?
In an October order, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission trimmed the authorized rate incentive for the RITELine transmission project by one-third. The action prompted one commissioner to ask whether FERC is retreating from its incentive policy on needed transmission lines.
Going Once ...
Mergers and acquisitions can help companies balance their asset portfolios and improve their financial strength. But economic and regulatory forces are driving more buyers into the market, and the demand for attractive targets might soon outstrip the supply.
Cheap Gas Forever?
Even with recent large natural gas discoveries and strong inventories, the supply of natural gas isn’t elastic enough to handle significant demand increases. Rising gas prices will push coal back into the money despite coal plants’ high costs to comply with EPA regulations.
Energy Efficiency: 15 percent by 2020?
A new survey of industry experts reveals a surprising consensus on the size of the energy efficiency resource. Overall, energy efficiency is expected to lower electricity consumption by 5 to 15 percent, and natural gas consumption by 5 to 10 percent. These results debunk the notion that conservation is a fad. On the contrary, they herald a new beginning for energy efficiency.
Gas Demand Response: Are Customers Ready?
As more natural gas is used for power generation, more volatility can be expected in gas markets. Demand response might provide a tool for managing that volatility, but is it technically feasible? And will gas customers accept it?
EVs and the Smart Grid: Accelerating Progress
Better batteries, renewables and more intelligent electricity networks are converging to deliver efficiency and environmental improvements. Electric vehicle (EV) batteries are both the stumbling block and the catalyst for transformative change.
Distributed Renewables: A National Imperative
For decades, America’s national security policies have been closely linked with our energy policies. Sustainable energy resources—especially local and renewable options—represent a lynchpin in the country’s future security. As such, it’s time to re-think the way we’re financing renewable investments.
Up in Smoke: PJM auction jettisons coal
PJM recently completed its capacity auction for resources serving the 2014/15 delivery year. The numbers are in, and they show that many coal-fired power plants -- facing increasing capital costs to comply with new EPA regulations -- have fallen out of the market. At the same time, demand-side resources claim a growing share of the market, bringing lower costs and environmental benefits.
Killing the Electric Car ... Again!
Regulatory policy pits utilities against the EV revolution. Utility CEOs should see electric vehicles (EV) as a way to grow their electricity sales and increase both net income and valuation multiples -- all while bringing down overall costs for consumers, greening their communities, and improving America’s energy security. But most utility rate structures penalize utilities for excess earnings and discourage them from taking risks and innovating. Regulatory policy must change in order to pave the way for EVs.
Managing Overgrowth: FERC compliance creates reliability opportunities
Tree limbs and power lines don’t mix. That was the final verdict after overgrown trees caused blackouts immobilizing major swaths of the East Coast in 2003. FERC responded to the incident by imposing stricter clearance guidelines with hefty fines for non-compliance. But rather than view this increased scrutiny as a threat, some utilities choose to view the new regulations as an opportunity to invest in a more strategic and integrated approach to vegetation management.
Protecting Smart Meter Data: CPUC Targets Privacy Worries
The California Public Utility Commission’s recent proposed rule aims to protect customer privacy while also facilitating third-party access to smart meter data for energy management, demand response and other customer service applications. But does it go far enough?
Call-Center Quality Assurance: Optimizing service with monitoring technology
Employees will account for up to 80 percent of contact center budgets in the increasingly demanding world of customer interaction. Such a substantial investment cannot be left to chance, yet, it is often overlooked and rarely reviewed by managers. The latest technologies, however, can lower operating costs and improve CSR performance.
Green Power Supercharge: Boosting Enrollments through Call Center Training
Green power programs have grown quickly at many utilities. But whether customer enrollments will plateau or continue growing depends on whether utilities make the most of both traditional and non-traditional communication channels for promoting participation. The most important channel is also the most traditional—the call center. As a result, staff training can have a major impact on the success of green power programs.
States' Rights, Gamed Markets: FERC OK's price floor, but low-ball bids could continue.
With New Jersey and Maryland threatening distort prices in PJM’s RPM capacity market, employing low-ball bids to ‘dump’ thousands of megawatts of below-cost generation into the region, FERC at last has OK’d rule changes to boost market monitoring and stiffen the market’s minimum bid floor. But even that may not be enough to stop states from exercising their constitutional authority to regulate in-state generation.
Making Solar Grid-Friendly: Why integrating solar will follow the wind model.
Utility-scale solar is more cost-effective than residential or commercial projects, offering greater economic and environmental benefits as well, but will achieve its full promise only with the right technology solutions for interconnection to the transmission grid. If made fully “grid-friendly,” utility-scale solar ought to be able to act like a traditional power plant — aiding voltage stability and supporting grid integrity during transmission system disturbances.
Chat Grows Up: Using online agents to enhance utility customer service.
Given the consumer push-back against smart metering, utilities can get ahead of the learning curve and provide both customer service and education through proactive online chat technology. But telephone agents aren’t the same as chat agents, and online chat must be properly implemented to maintain the 'human element.'
A Smarter Smart Grid: How to plan and deploy your communications layer.
For the smart grid puzzle, the communications layer ranks as perhaps the fastest changing piece. And yet, for that very reason, it affords the greatest degree of flexibility for utility or grid system specialists seeking to upgrade their systems. Depending on the architecture, communications equipment often can be phased-in, even while harder assets are replaced wholesale, yielding a more linear investment schedule over time.
Searching for Marcellus Haven: How PA can establish world-class standards for gas drilling.
As doubts arise over hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas locked in rock shale formations, policymakers must avoid hyperbole and seek balanced, real-world solutions.
You've Got Intelligent Mail: Achieving efficiency with the new USPS barcodes
Think of it as the Post Office version of Smart Grid. With the new USPS Intelligent Mail Barcodes, you’ll be able to track letter drops, establish delivery dates, and find out for sure whether your customer’s check is really in the mail.
How Mobile RF Can Aid Smart Grid Communications
For rural areas and remote devices, land mobile radio fills in the gaps. With no single wireless broadband service commonly available across both urban and rural portions of typical utility service territories, private land mobile radio service can help provide a network of networks to drive data communications for Smart Grid applications.
Building Security into the Smart Grid: Responding to Scientific American's Gloomy Picture
Scientific American published an article by security guru Melissa Hathaway last fall that cast serious doubt on the security of the smart grid. But while it may be true that a gold rush toward grid automation poses security challenges, there’s no need to panic. A simple layered-security strategy can vastly reduce vulnerabilities without forcing a total re-think of smart grid technology.
The Microgrid Enterprise: Realizing the Promise of the Smart Grid
If the U.S. is going to be successful in using alternative energy sources to address the fragility of the national power grid, microgrids are an essential part of the solution. Fail-safe, distributed intelligence that ensures tailored energy supply for customer's loads in the event of any contingency, either inside or outside the microgrid, enables a customer-managed power service network to function. With such technology advances, the microgrid is moving from being regarded as a seen-but-not-heard stepchild, to an intelligent, contributing citizen within the smart grid community.
Feel the Electricity: How Situation Management Empowers Utilities for CIP Compliance
NERC’s critical infrastructure protection (CIP) regulations address everything from the identification of critical cyber assets to the physical security infrastructure required to protect them. While utilities have latitude in terms of how to comply, compliance is mandatory -- and consistent compliance across CIP assets is vital for ensuring security and avoiding penalties. As part of an overall CIP compliance program, situation management technology can simplify and improve security operations.
Energy Conservation and the Consumer's Dilemma - 1/10/2011
Many people want to conserve energy. In fact, at least one in four are what you would call “active” and “frugal” conservers. Yet most folks are pulled in two opposite directions. They’re willing to conserve all right; they just don’t want to have to give up their right to consume! And therein lies the consumer’s and hence the marketer’s dilemma: How to make it easy — and painless! — for customers to go green. And for the consumer electronics giant Belkin, that lesson was only learned through hard experience.
Small & Modular Reactors: Putting America at the Nuclear Forefront (Again!) - 11/10
In a March 23, 2010 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu extolled the benefits of investing in the U.S. nuclear energy industry. Investing in new nuclear reactors, Secretary Chu argued, not only provides clean energy, but also is vital to maintaining America’s leadership in nuclear technology. “Our choice is clear,”continued Secretary Chu,“[d]evelop these technologies today or import them tomorrow.”
Utility-Scale Solar: Pitfalls You Need to Know - 10/10
While utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) plants offer a unique opportunity for utilities looking to meet state mandated Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), the development of these projects is fraught with risk for developers and utilities alike.
Tres Amigas: Technology Attributes - 09/10
The Tres Amigas SuperStation interconnection project, first announced late in 2009, has been rapidly coalescing now that major vendor contracts have been signed with CH2M HILL, Xtreme Power, Burns & McDonnell, ZGlobal, Inc. and Viridity Energy, Inc.
Demand Response and ARRA Projects - 08/10
Money has the ability to distort. In the electric industry, large amounts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) smart-grid funds were awarded to advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) projects. Unfortunately, the sizes of the awards and the tight time constraints for spending them have distorted the planning process. Utility commissions have noted that applications around matching funds in some cases lack clarity of purpose, mainly ratepayer benefits. In recent weeks, trade press reporting has shifted emphasis from devices to applications. Quietly, Demand Response 2.0 is emerging as the killer application for the new energy network, the “Enernet.”
Is Cap-and-Trade Kaput? - 07/10
With Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement on July 23, 2010 that a greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program will not be included in energy legislation that he intends to bring to the floor before the August recess, most observers agree that cap-and-trade is all but dead in this Congress. A more intriguing question is whether cap-and-trade as a means to reduce U.S. GHG emissions can be resurrected at all in the next and future Congresses.
FERC's Proposed Credit Reforms - 6/10
FERC is proposing to reform credit practices that would require RTOs and ISOs to file tariff changes to their region-specific credit risk assessment methods. The FERC NOPR would move toward market standardization prompted by fears of bankruptcies, market fragmentation and recent general market turmoil. Andrea Chambers and Trevor Stiles examine the balancing act FERC is facing.
FERC Penalty Guidelines - 05/10
In the compliance and enforcement world, easy answers are often hard to come by. FERC’s March 2010 Policy Statement on Penalty Guidelines represents the commission’s effort to prescribe, and thus enable a company to predict, the potential penalty exposure a company may face when it finds itself in the difficult situation of having identified an actual or potential lapse of compliance. An effective compliance program is important to help a company avoid violations, but as Jones Day attorney Jason F. Leif explains, it’s equally important to ensure that any violation that slips through the cracks results in as small a penalty as possible.
Building a Solar Business Case (04/10)
Rob DeLine of Applied Materials makes the case for a wholesale distributed PV ecosystem as a self-sustaining profit engine. PLUS: Smart Grid Snafus; Location Intelligence.
CO2 Disclosure Obligations - (3/10)
SEC issues interpretive guidelines. Also in this issue: smart grid job outlook; empowering consumers.
Dynamic Pricing and Data Management (2/10)
Being "Smart": What Utilities Can Expect
Managing Contractor Risk (1/10)
Staying at the Forefront of a Construction Renaissance
Carbon Trading: Who Will Regulate? (12/09)
CARBON TRADING: Who Will Regulate the Markets?
FERC's DR Focus (11/09)
WHOLESALE ELECTRICITY MARKETS: FERC's Focus on Demand and Response
DOE's '7 Traits of a Smart Grid' (10/09)
TECHNOLOGY TODAY: The DOE's "7 Traits of a Smart Grid"
Climate Change-Making a Rapid Stop (9/09)
CLIMATE CHANGE: Making a Rapid Stop
SPARK August 2009
Energy Market Risks: Identifying and Planning for New Forms
SPARK July 2009
Outsourced Training Management: DTE Energy Meeting Critical Goals
SPARK June 2009
Smart Meters and Rates: Building a Case
SPARK May 2009
Utility Employment: How to Train the Next Generation
SPARK March 2009
Renewable Energy Developments 2008
SPARK April 2009
Smart Grids: The Roadmap to DOE Compliance and How to Avoid Potholes When Selecting an MDM System
SPARK February 2009
Mergers & Acquisitions: 2008 - A Year Like No Other
SPARK January 2009
Utility Employment: Energy Companies Can't Wait
SPARK December 2008
Electric Transmission Real Estate Investment Trusts: Grid in the Crystal Ball
SPARK November 2008
Risk Management: The Wholesale Power Market
SPARK October 2008
Demand Response: Going to Market
SPARK September 2008
Prepay Customers - Without Prepay Meters!
SPARK August 2008
Evolution of the Energy Deal
SPARK July 2008
CEOs on Carbon Regulation
SPARK June 2008
Biogas to Electric Power Conversion Advances
SPARK May 2008
Beyond Coal: No Longer Cheap - So What Next?
SPARK April 2008
Canada's New Gold Rush
SPARK March 2008
Potential AmerenUE Pull Out Problematic
SPARK February 2008
Utility Restructuring and Unnatural Acts
SPARK January 2008
Fueling Innovation and Transformation
SPARK December 2007
SPARK November 2007
SPARK May 2006
Demand Response and Advanced Metering Infrastructure
