Innovation

Utilities and Innovation: Are We There Yet?

Utilities need viable business models in these brave new, innovative days.

Everywhere in utility circles, from the Edison Foundation to the New York State plan "Reforming the Energy Vision" (REV), innovation is the byword.

Community Renaissance

When one age ends, another begins.

Community microgrids raise questions about the role of the utility franchise, versus the free market.

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.

Innovation Mandate

Meeting the just-and-reasonable standard in a time of change.

Who can say for sure if markets are working? The landscape keeps shifting.

A Trip to RIIO in Your Future?

Great Britain’s latest innovation in grid regulation.

Great Britain’s electric regulator takes performance-based regulation to a new, more complex level, weighing policy choices against attendant costs.

Bottling the Genie

Why deregulation is easy and reregulation is hard.

Even with convincing evidence that deregulation has failed to deliver promised benefits, efforts to restore public oversight face tough resistance. The reasons involve policy inertia—and blind faith in free markets.

The Importance of Being Sustainable

Doing the right thing can drive utility stock performance.

Utilities get little credit for their efforts to strengthen the sustainability of their businesses. But these efforts have paid dividends in stock performance, capital costs, regulatory relationships, and brand value. Capturing the greatest value for shareholders will require utilities to become better understood as socially responsible enterprises.

Energy Storage Solutions

Barriers and breakthroughs to a smarter grid.

Technology is quickly making energy storage more economical and effective than ever before. But companies that wish to invest in storage capacity face a journey through a frustrating regulatory no-man’s land. Opening the gateway for storage to deliver smart grid benefits will require a more streamlined and coherent approach to regulating storage as utility infrastructure.