When Water Meets Energy
Each essential. Each dependent on the other.
Water depends on energy and energy depends on water, creating opportunities for synergies and efficiencies.
Perspective
Microgrids: Where's the Beef?
Integration beats islanding, anyway you slice it.
A microgrid is a throwback. It’s anathema to what we know about economies of scale. Integration is what maximizes the ability of least-cost resources to reach load. By interfering with least-cost dispatch, microgrids can only raise energy costs.
EPA, NERC and Reliability
Expect more analysis – more scenarios, more detail – as state compliance plans become better known.
As things stand today, even without the Clean Power Plan, we expect to see the retirement of more than 6 percent of North America’s generation capacity by 2030.
Our Nuclear Lifeline
Learning from the tragedy of Vermont Yankee.
Learning from the tragedy of Vermont Yankee. Can merchant nuclear operators compete in the market place with cheap natural gas and subsidized renewables?
Segment and Conquer
To measure efficiency, you needn’t count every customer.
True believers don’t respond much to urging – they will save energy regardless. So why not just ignore them in measuring the success of energy efficiency programs?
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.
Start the Conversation
The regulator’s role in a world divided by distributed generation.
A state utility commissioner urges her colleagues to begin planning now for distributed generation – before it’s too late.
Miles to Go
Progress has been made, but much work remains along the path to ERO completion.
FERC demonstrated strong leadership in meeting the aggressive timeline set by Congress for establishing the regulatory basis on which the Electric Reliability Organization will be created. But next summer’s peak-demand season is fast approaching. And much more work remains ahead for the industry to finish the job.
The Most Effective Way
Market prices send investors clear signals to invest in the most efficient means for producing electricity.
Higher electricity prices have drawn sharp attention to the design of organized wholesale electricity markets—particularly to areas where residential customers’ rates will increase because multi-year rate freezes are ending. Some suggest changing the way that markets set wholesale electricity prices, or doing away with competitive markets entirely and returning to government regulation of prices. They say that the design of the markets exaggerates the effects of natural-gas price increases and unfairly rewards generators that use lower-cost fuels.
Life Along the Potomac
What federal regulators should do to ensure security, reliability, and cleaner air in our nation’s capital.
The District of Columbia Public Service Commission successfully has used two little known provisions in the Federal Power Act (FPA) to prevent an aging generating plant crucial to the national capital region’s reliability from being abruptly shut down by Virginia’s environmental regulators. In the end, the immediate threat to the region’s reliability was obviated while the environmental concerns associated with the plant were not ignored. The action resulted in a model for how federal energy regulators and environmental regulators can address similar problems in the future.