Parsing Poles and Towers
Customer cost allocations using the Minimum Distribution System method.
Accounting and Rate Design: How to use the Minimum Distribution Method to allocate local grid costs to end-use customers.
Pricing
Getting Past Net Metering
A forward-looking solution to rate reform, for when solar costs hit bottom.
Why keep rate design shackled to the ways of the past, especially at the dawn of a solar revolution?
Why Care About Transactive Energy?
Only if you’re a governor, legislator, regulator ... or customer.
When ratepayers become generators, the utility industry is turned upside-down. A warning to legislators, regulators – and even governors – on what to expect.
Why is Electricity Use No Longer Growing?
Demand growth has been declining steadily now for some 50 years. But why: Price? Self Generation? The Great Recession?
Smart by Default
Time-varying rates from the get-go – not just by opt-in.
Default enrollment for time-varying rates, with an opt-out, will reduce peak demand and far more than a default flat rate with a TVR opt-in.
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?
Rise of the Machines
Who’s afraid of the transactive grid?
Smart grids and nodal markets spark the emergence of a transactional grid. In fact it’s already happened, and we’re just becoming aware.
The Law of Unintended Consequences
The transition to distributed generation calls for a new regulatory model.
With the best of intentions, policymakers have encouraged the proliferation of distributed generation (DG) in various forms. Now, however, the trend toward DG is accelerating more rapidly than traditional utility ratemaking and business models are capable of managing. Failure to rationalize the regulatory framework will bring serious and costly disruption.
March of the Microgrids
Technology is changing the game. Is your utility ready?
Although today microgrids serve a tiny fraction of the market, that share will grow as costs fall. Utilities can benefit if they plan ahead.
Load as a Resource
Integrating controllable demand into real-time, security constrained economic dispatch.
Historically, grid operators tapped into voluntary load reduction as a last resort for keeping the lights on. But now, smart grid technologies and dynamic pricing mechanisms bring vastly greater potential for using load as a dispatchable resource. Effective implementation requires advanced technologies—and also foresight in creating programs, policies, and market mechanisms.