Improving performance through graduated conditional ROE incentives.
Unlike the majority of performance-based regulation plans, alternative design paradigms require less data, by instead allowing firms to reveal performance potential. In an asymmetric environment, regulators don’t have needed information, but that can be overcome with better models and incentives.
Smart metering changes the back-office paradigm.
AMI’s data explosion will require back-office changes for CIS/billing.
Perception trumps reality at Florida ‘solar city.’
Once upon a time, a real estate developer dreamed of building a planned community. The developer, Syd Kitson, envisioned a “city of tomorrow™” in southwestern Florida, designed for efficiency, convenience and harmony with nature. Instead of driving cars everywhere, the 45,000 residents of Kitson’s Babcock Ranch would ride bikes to school, and walk to the cinema. They’d take a tram to visit friends in another hamlet, on the other side of a lush wildlife preserve.
Allowance structures will influence project economics.
Carbon-reduction policies are being designed and implemented across the country. One common feature of these regulatory programs is a carbon cap-and-trade system—i.e., a carbon emissions market.
Total cost of ownership accounting optimizes long-term costs.
A large regional utility forfeited significant operating revenues after it replaced pulverizers at several of its coal-fired power plants. Because the replacement pulverizers were sized to operate at 100-percent capacity during operations using the coal typically procured by the utility, upgraded plants had to be derated following a change to lower BTU-rated fuel. If utility decision makers had used a total cost of ownership (TCO) framework, they could have avoided this situation.
AGL Resources created a new office of technology and environmental sustainability, to be headed by Ira Pearl as v.p. Jay Sutton is promoted to v.p., engineering and supply chain services at AGL’s Florida City Gas and coastal Georgia subsidiaries. Melvin Williams is promoted to general manager, Florida City Gas and coastal Georgia. And others...
The search for the ultimate wind forecasting model got a boost at the end of 2008 when DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory began collaborating with a Portuguese research institute, INESC Porto, to develop a new platform for making such predictions.
A prerequisite for sustained nuclear renaissance.
The nuclear renaissance requires safety as its central focus. Industry vigilance at all levels is key to accident prevention, but only favorable public opinion will allow the industry to realize its enormous potential.
The best example of combined dynamic rates and smart billing is found in Ontario, Canada. It uses central MDM to produce time-differentiated customer bills.
Chris O’Brien is no starry-eyed idealist. An engineer with an MBA, he began his career developing fossil-fired power plants for the AES Corp. But in the 1990s his career took a different turn, when he launched the Energy Star program for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. After that, he went into the solar energy business, and never has looked back.