Strategy & Planning

Microgrids: Friend or Foe for Utilities?

For many, it’s the next logical step for smart grid technology.

A small, but growing, number of utilities are embracing these technologies. Microgrids offer a networking platform that the utility can both aggregate and optimize.

Finding Common Ground on Energy Efficiency

Policy recommendations for utilities and regulators.

It’s the downright cheapest way of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Yet it’s mired from state to state in battles over definitions, principles, and parameters. Herein a collection of recommended policy positions to break the impasse over energy efficiency.

The Death of the Grid?

As Mark Twain would say, the reports are exaggerated.

Contrary to rumor, the grid won’t die, but in fact must grow exponentially, in function, complexity, and usefulness.

Integrated Energy

Distributed energy + distributed controls = distributed benefits.

Utility business models are at risk in a world of distributed energy resources and local intelligent controls, such as microgrids. But the real revolution may lie in customer expectations, where third parties threaten to take ownership.

Managing Assets is Not Asset Management

The real thing demands a culture shift toward long-range thinking.

Rather, it involves a culture shift: towards a broader view to encompass such business processes as life-cycle planning, performance analysis, and the entire value chain.

Integrated Distribution Planning

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

The next frontier, and the logical extension of integrated resource planning. Self-generation, the connected home, the celebrated internet of things – they all suggest it’s time to focus on the local grid.

Germany's Energiewende

Lessons learned for U.S. utilities – drawn from first-person fact-finding.

Policy experts travel to the continent to get a first-hand view on the lessons the U.S. utilities should take away from Germany’s rush to renewables.

Wired Together

For DATC, grid expansion is a team effort.

An interview with key executives of Duke-American Transmission Co.: Phillip Grigsby, president, and Randy Satterfield, executive vice president. Both also sit on DATC's Board of Managers.

Fueling America's Economic Engine

New energy economy also relies on some old fossil friends.

It has not been public investments in sustainable fuels and modern tools that have led to the re-awakening of the U.S. economy. Rather, it’s been mostly private investment in shale gas development that has led to new capital formation, infrastructure development and jobs galore.