Law & Lawyers

Ratemaking and the Campaign Against Rooftop Solar

Rate design should balance consumer and investor interests.

Regulators should ensure that changes to rate design seek to balance consumer and utility interests. Rates that are intended to insulate utilities from economic and technological change while providing no benefits to consumers ought to be considered unjust, unreasonable, and unduly discriminatory.

Byline:

Ari Peskoe

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Public Weighs In on Market Conditions Threatening Nuclear Power Plants

Examining the problem for nuclear power shows value in informing the public.

What should be done to create market conditions to prevent the loss of the nation’s only zero-carbon large-scale baseload electricity source?

Byline:

Ann Stouffer Bisconti

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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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A Robotic Concrete Crawler

Play Station Controls Guide Robot on Concrete Inspection Trips

EPRI has designed a robot for inspecting hard-to-reach concrete surfaces. A robotic inspection system would eliminate the need to use scaffolding or rappelling for routine structural evaluations, eliminating the associated setup challenges, time requirements, costs, and safety hazards.

Byline:

Maria Guimaraes

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Action Needed Now To Prevent More Nuclear Plant Closures

Threat to nearly one-fifth of our nation’s ninety-nine reactors is real

Individually, these closures are understandable financial decisions. But the cumulative impact endangers any chance of meeting U.S. climate change goals.

Byline:

Maria Korsnick

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Marginal Utility

The Carbon Paradigm Shift

The telephone companies dumped land lines for cellular, and prospered, thanks to their size, ability to raise funds, and name recognition. They migrated to a new paradigm. Can’t electricity providers?

Byline:

Leonard S. Hyman and William I. Tilles

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POPS Is Here to Stay

Reports of Plain Old Power Service’s death greatly exaggerated

The vast majority of electric consumers want reliable, clean, reasonably priced electricity, and little else.

Byline:

Steve Huntoon

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Nikola Tesla and Bob Dylan

July Birthdays

Thomas Davenport built the first direct current motor in the U.S. One of Nikola Tesla's many achievements include the first alternating current induction motor and transformer. And on July 24, 1965, the controversial performance by Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival took place, with electric amps.

Byline:

Steve Mitnick

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Weird Appliances

Getting ready for the big game? You need a keg fridge. What about a vision toaster so you can see how browned your bread is? And how about a stencil toaster so you can decorate your toast or even write a message on it?

Byline:

Steve Mitnick

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Energy People: Tony Clark

We talked with FERC Commissioner Tony Clark, who has said he will not seek a second term.

Commissioner Clark is serving his first term at FERC and formerly served as a member of the North Dakota Public Service Commission. He was interviewed by Pat McMurray, who has a long background in the energy business.

Byline:

Tony Clark, with Pat McMurray

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