Consumers Want What?
Rather than accept the rhetoric, let’s find out.
What’s missing is asking consumers to consider realistic tradeoffs between two characteristics of electricity rather than the desirability of a single characteristic in isolation.
Frontlines
We Made Light Free
As inexpensive as lighting was, twenty years ago, we’ve since made it close to free. Too cheap to meter?
Will lighting drop to a tenth of residential consumption, then below? Every use of a machine, appliance, device shrunk in its significance to the household budget.
100-to-1 Odds
Why merchant transmission still looks iffy.
The other week, courtesy of Infocast and its Transmission Summit 2002, held in Washington, D.C. in late January, I got to see, hear, and ask questions of three emerging stars of the merchant transmission biz.
Electricity's Capacity Factor, a Problem?
Electric infrastructure is used half the time on average. Is this a problem requiring rapid radical reform?
Some of you take the subway to work. What’s the capacity factor of the subway system? Our electric grid provides enormous value to its customers, with a combination of infrastructure and workforces with varying capacity factors.
No, Edison Wouldn't Recognize Today's Electric Industry
A put down of the industry’s innovation can be put aside
The last year of Edison’s life was vastly different from today. Residential electric consumption is about 140 times greater than 1930.
Forum for Our Industry's Civil Discourse
Fortnightly’s new chief reflects on his background and our principles.
The public interest is the coin of this realm.
Solar Shines As Regulatory Battles Abound
A tough legal and financial terrain is confronting producers, utilities and regulators.
State commissions are challenged to find the sweet spot whereby utilities can afford to maintain their systems and homeowners are motivated to go green.
Will Natural Gas Move the Transportation Sector?
It has already changed the utility and manufacturing industries.
In a free market society, it would only seem logical to allow the ‘unrestricted’ flow of goods and services, as it pertains to U.S. produced natural gas.
The Economics of Clean Power
And how the market has outmaneuvered the political forces, so far.
While former CEO Charles Bayless says that economics remains the driving factor behind the shifting sands, there are plenty who would put the blame on the Obama administration and its “War on Coal.”
Is Nuclear Energy Still Viable?
Cheap natural gas is not just hurting coal. It’s doing the same to nuclear.
As the nation strives for cleaner air and less carbon emissions, nuclear – the most promising carbon-free power source – faces stiff competition from natural gas, which is cheap, abundant, and a lot easier to get permitted and built than a conventional reactor.