Rent the Rooftop
A new front opens in the solar wars.
Has Arizona Public Service found a way to cheat the death spiral?
Fortnightly Magazine - August 2014
People (August 2014)
Chairmen were elected to the Edison Electric Institute, including Theodore Craver (Edison International), Nicholas Akins (American Electric Power) and Thomas Fanning (Southern Co.); ISO New England changed its wholesale market management; Bechtel’s nuclear business line president, Greg Ashley, was elected to the Nuclear Energy Institute’s board of directors and executive committee. And others...
Transactions (August 2014)
Wisconsin Energy to acquire Integrys in a transaction valued at $9.1 billion; Dominion to acquire the CID Solar Project from EDF Renewable Energy; Landis+Gyr to acquire GRIDiant Corp.; PPL Corporation and Riverstone Holdings LLC to merge merchant power generation businesses into a new company Talen Energy Corporation; plus debt offerings totaling $1.5 billion.
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.
Curing the Death Spiral
Seeking a rate design that recovers costs fairly from customers with rooftop solar.
Load research data shows how utilities can levy a demand charge to recover costs fairly from residential customers with rooftop solar.
Rooftop Parity
Solar for Everyone, including Utilities
An independent system operator for the distribution network could open more opportunities for distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar.
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.
Utility System Hardening
Taking Resiliency One Step Further
An independent system operator for the distribution network could allow utilities to invest in rooftop solar behind the meter and within territory.
Reliable But Costly
Recent trends in distribution line undergrounding.
Utility distribution lines increasingly are going underground, but costs are still prohibitive for replacing existing overhead lines.
Threat Level Red
Integrating weather and GIS data for more accurate threat assessments.
Weather and GIS are being combined in new ways to provide better storm threat assessments - helping utilities create increasingly effective battle plans to defend against approaching storms.