Demand Response: Getting the Prices Right
The rule works in the direction of more regulation to hamper innovation and counteracts incentives the rule creates.
FERC made a mistake in Order 745 and should change the pricing rule.
FERC
High Stakes at the High Court
U.S. Supreme Court to decide demand response case.
Cost-conscious commercial and industrial customers may be oblivious to the legal issues surrounding their energy choices, but their demand response providers are not. The U.S. Supreme Court will now decide whether those services will be regulated by the federal government or state utility commissions.
Constitutional Controversy
Can EPA’s Clean Power Plan Pass Muster?
The Clean Power Plan’s fate may hinge on whether the federal government is seen as usurping states’ rights under the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. Harvard’s Law School professors debate the issue.
How to Talk to Regulators
Why some proceedings blow up, while others reach consensus.
The core of a good regulatory proceeding is a conversation.
Planning vs. Partiality
A case study from PJM on competitive procurement of regional transmission under FERC Order 1000.
What happens to FERC Order 1000, and its vaunted quest for fairness and transparency, when regional grid planners ask for competitive bids to solve a pressing transmission need, but then modify some of the project proposals, unilaterally, in an honest effort to improve them?
Risk Holds Sway
Interest rates not always controlling for return on equity.
(November 2014) Our annual survey of rates of return on common equity authorized by state public utility commissions in recent rate cases for electric and gas retail distribution utilities.
$9 Billion at Risk
If PJM markets should lose demand response as a capacity resource.
The AEMA sees the self-help DR revolution as a key to America’s recent industrial renaissance: “If demand response is removed from wholesale markets,” the group says, then “the electric grid is back to the rotary phone.”
The Politics of Carbon
Supreme Court may ultimately clarify EPA’s authority under Clean Power Plan.
The Supreme Court questions federal agency authority over greenhouse gas emissions in the recent case of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA.
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.
Utility Capital in the Twenty-First Century
What FERC might learn from Thomas Piketty and his best-selling book on wealth and income.
Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” shows why utility transmission owners should not enjoy excessive returns.