Renewable portfolio standard

Making Peace With Solar

Electric executives open up on what they’re planning next.

Electric power executives open up about their solar investments. What motivates them? What are they planning next?

Embracing Disruption

Developing a leadership role for utilities in alternative technologies.

Faced with aging assets, rising operating costs, growing regulatory risks, and flat demand growth, utilities are challenged to remain competitive in an evolving energy market. The answer might be for utilities to establish a leadership position and pursue a more flexible mission.

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.

PPAs for DG

What every real property owner should know.

Financing has been scarce for distributed generation. But as opportunities expand, commercial frameworks are solidifying. Power purchase agreements are paving the way to a bright future for DG.

Green REITs, MLPs, and Up-Cs

As tax equity investors are moving away from renewable power facilities, political and market forces are creating the need for additional project financing. Fortunately, three non-traditional capital vehicles offer low-cost financing alternatives.
As tax equity investors are moving away from renewable power facilities, political and market forces are creating the need for additional project financing. Fortunately, three non-traditional capital vehicles offer low-cost financing alternatives.

CEO Forum: Facing the Future

Three CEOs, three business models, one shared outlook.

Cheap gas, regulatory uncertainties, and a technology revolution are re-making the U.S. utility industry. Top executives at three very different companies—CMS, NRG, and the Midwest ISO—share their outlook on the industry’s transformative changes.

Green Power Control

Preparing the grid for large-scale renewables.

With large solar arrays and wind farms being proposed to connect to transmission and sub-transmission systems, are utility companies sufficiently prepared to handle the challenge of integrating these large intermittent resources? The industry now must decide whether transmission reliability factors — most notably dynamic voltage support and system frequency management — need to be resolved by renewable generators, or whether they should become a cost of doing business for transmission providers and reliability coordinators.