decoupling

Regulators Can Win the Trifecta with Residential Demand Charges

Advanced metering and demand charges give efficient and equitable price signals to customers.

The wide deployment of smart meters gives regulatory policy-makers a rare opportunity to change residential rate design. This can be done in a way that improves economic efficiency, and utility consumer and shareholder equity. Here we provide ten questions that should be asked by policy-makers, as well as some guidance in deriving the answers.

Customer First

Is the current regulatory compact in anyone’s best interests?

Serving customers’ needs should be a top priority for power companies, irrespective of the regulatory construct and business model. Transformation doesn’t change this basic fact, but how do we break the model without breaking the system?

Results-Based Regulation

A more dynamic approach to grid modernization.

The utility’s role is changing, and regulation must change along with it – to spur innovation and respond to evolving customer needs. Modernizing the industry will require a dynamic approach.

The Innovator's Dilemma

Assessing the risks and rewards of distributed energy strategies.

To embrace change or fight it? The choice to either act or wait and see is fraught with complexity.

Game Changers

State regulators address transformative forces.

In Fortnightly’s Regulators’ Roundtable, commissioners from Idaho, Illinois, and Minnesota consider transformative forces and the regulatory response.

Turning Energy Inside Out

Amory Lovins on negawatts, renewables, and neoclassical markets.

Fortnightly speaks with Amory Lovins about the evolving role of conservation, competition, and distributed resources in the energy industry.

DSM in the Rate Case

A regulatory model for resource parity between supply and demand.

Integrated resource planning must level the field for both supply- and demand-side resources. Commissions in several states are showing the way.