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Law & Lawyers

James Maxwell and Charles Coulomb

June Birthdays

On June 14, 1736, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was born in France.

The name might seem vaguely familiar. In an electrical engineering or physics class that you struggled to keep awake in, the prof defined the unit of electric charge.

The coulomb, or just C, is the unit of electric charge. It is the charge transported by a constant electrical current of one ampere in one second.

C comes into plays in capacitance, the storing of charge. C is also the amount of excess charge on a capacitor of one farad charged to a potential difference of one volt.

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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The British Electricity Model: 25 Years of Experience

Should We Follow U.K.’s Lead?

British price cap regulation quickly became the international gold standard for regulation. It looked so simple. But if the purpose was to provide a dramatically different and less expensive electricity experience, it failed.
Byline: 

Leonard Hyman and William Tilles

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David Bowie, Nikola Tesla and The Iron Giant

It takes Hogarth to pull down a massive off-switch to disconnect and save Iron Giant and protect grid assets.

Tesla and Edison have been depicted in a number of films over the years. “The Secret of Nikola Tesla” was a 1980 biopic made in Yugoslavia. “The Prestige” was a 2006 thriller, and in the role of Nikola Tesla, David Bowie in his final picture.
Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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FERC Chasing the Uncatchable

Trying to fix mandatory capacity markets like trying to win at Whack-A-Mole, Part II

The proposals do not mandate participation in mandatory auction markets, much less try to set artificial floors on seller bids.
Byline: 

Delia Patterson and Harvey Reiter

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Chasing the Uncatchable

Why trying to fix mandatory capacity markets is like trying to win a game of Whack-A-Mole (Parts I & II)

FERC has little to show for more than a decade of tinkering with mandatory capacity markets.
Byline: 

Delia D. Patterson and Harvey L. Reiter

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Tax Implications of NEM Successor Policies

Federal income tax treatment has nothing to do with pricing sale of electricity to utility or customer.

Advocates for net metering argue that if the electricity delivered by the customer to the utility is credited at the full retail rate, the amount is not taxable, but if credited at less than the full retail rate, such as under a feed-in tariff or a value of solar tariff, the IRS might count the credited amount as taxable income. A tax expert fills us in on the other side of the story.
Byline: 

Alex Zakupowsky

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Here Comes the Sun

Growing Impacts of Residential Solar on Utility Customer Service

What does PV mean for utilities’ residential customer service operations? From helping customers with supplier selection, through installation and maintenance issues? And with billing? To begin to address this question, we conducted two sets of surveys of residential electricity customers in the second quarter of 2016.
Byline: 

Daniel Gabaldon, Matt Guarini and Jamie Wimberly

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