Demand

Action by Choice

Time-varying rates is an effective way to satisfy customer demands.

In the 21st century economy pivoted on customer choice, opt-in is the path to tread in the provision of time varying rates to electricity customers.

Business Model Mashup

Three ‘power plays’ for utilities seeking growth.

Threats to the utility business model mean that it’s time to make choices about future growth to protect cash flows while investing in new ventures.

Smart Gas Investment

As a bridge to a low-carbon future, natural gas can’t – and shouldn’t – meet every need.

Some describe natural gas generation as the “Swiss army knife” of technologies, as it can meet a variety of electric system needs. Yet while a Swiss army knife can prove handy, we don’t often use it when we have access to a well-equipped toolbox. It can introduce unnecessary costs and unacceptable risks.

Distribution Optimization: Ready for Takeoff

Part 1: How markets today are out of sync.

The time has come to consider options for optimizing distributed energy resources, with the intent of supporting a least-cost, reliable, and clean system that delivers more choice and control for customers.

The Driving Ambition of Elon Musk

An electric car in every driveway, a battery in every garage.

Tesla’s Elon Musk is driving the electric car off the lot and onto the premises of America’s electric utilities, proposing to build and sell energy storage batteries on both a residential and grid-wide scale – ideas that the chief executive will fully flesh out at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in New Orleans this June.

PJM's Three-Way Proposal

A re-defined capacity product, revised parameters for generator performance, and a new role for demand response.

The proposal creates a new capacity product called the “Capacity Performance Resource.”

Playing Safe with Capacity Markets

PJM would minimize risk, but so did regulation.

Changes envisioned by PJM call for ever more structured markets, further reducing the scope of the competitive landscape from which RTOs arose. They may produce a system that is actually more costly and less innovative than regulation.

CODA Energy Begins Operation of the Largest Behind-The-Meter Energy Storage System in the Los Angeles Basin

CODA Energy announced the full interconnection and operation of the largest behind the meter lithium-ion energy storage system in the Los Angeles basin. The 1,054kWh / 510kW system was developed under a contract with South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) and co-funded through California's Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP). The project demonstrates the scalability of CODA Energy's peak shaving product architecture by managing demand charges for its facility headquarters.

2014 Utility Regulators' Forum

Diversifying Utility Regulation: State regulators voice opinions as mixed as the nation’s geography.

Interviews with public utility commissioners from key states – New York, California, Maryland, and Georgia – on coal carbon, climate, and the revolution in retail. What they’re thinking. What they’re planning.

FERC's Folly

Remand Order 745, fix the compensation scheme, but retain federal jurisdiction.

Why the D.C. Circuit should rehear the appeal of FERC Order 745, and how it should rule.