Demand Disruption Ahead
Utilities should think hard about business models.
Death spiral? Maybe not. But retail load – as served by utilities – will surely fall.
Law & Lawyers
In New York's Distributed Energy Future, Will Co-Generation Still Reign?
Distributed energy has a long history in the state – with co-generation, or combined heat and power, playing the dominant role. How is that portfolio changing today?
Combined heat and power still leads the Empire State in market penetration by distributed resources, but costs are not falling as fast as for storage or solar PV.
Digest (January 2015)
FERC approved the proposed merger of Exelon and Pepco Holdings; SunEdison and TerraForm Power agreed to acquire First Wind for $2.4 billion; NorthWestern Energy closed on its $900 million purchase of facilities from PPL Montana; Siemens Energy Management partnered with Microsoft and FuelCell Energy to develop the nation's first zero-carbon, waste-to-energy data center; ABB commissioned a power solution that will control power flow and enhance grid stability in Michigan; AES Southland was awarded a 20-year PPA by Southern California Edison to provide 100 MW of interconnected battery-based energy storage; Renewable Energy Systems Americas developed what will be the largest, fully commercial energy storage projects in North America; Westinghouse Electric, China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp., and Electricity Generation Co. agreed to develop and construct a four-unit nuclear power plant site in the Republic of Turkey. And others ...
Public Power Road Show
Sue Kelly’s ‘world tour’ brings APPA home.
There’s no one in the energy industry – and I mean absolutely no one – who is more on-message than Sue Kelly, now winding up her first year as CEO of the American Public Power Association.
New York's Natural Gas Path
The state is diverging from the national trend.
New York is taking its own path and outlawing the use of high-volume natural gas fracking. Yet, the state will remain a voracious consumer of natural gas that is fracked elsewhere. What gives?
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.
Nuclear's New Chance
Reprocessing nuclear fuel is a sustainable and viable option.
Reprocessing nuclear fuel separates the uranium and the plutonium for the rest of the spent fuel, enabling plant operators to reuse the uranium. But concerns over nuclear proliferation are stopping it in this country.
Playing Safe with Capacity Markets
PJM would minimize risk, but so did regulation.
Changes envisioned by PJM call for ever more structured markets, further reducing the scope of the competitive landscape from which RTOs arose. They may produce a system that is actually more costly and less innovative than regulation.
PJM's Three-Way Proposal
A re-defined capacity product, revised parameters for generator performance, and a new role for demand response.
The proposal creates a new capacity product called the “Capacity Performance Resource.”
Early Clean Power Planning
A hedging strategy for sec. 111(d).
While the public comment period on EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed rule has closed, there are still opportunities to engage in the federal policymaking process before the summer 2015 release of the final rule.