Smaller, Cheaper, and More Resilient
The rationale for microgrids.
Despite an array of challenges, microgrids are becoming a force in the market. Innovative projects bring greater efficiency and resilience.
DER
Securing Tomorrow's Grid (Part I)
Protecting smart systems against cyber threats.
Smart grid technologies bring a host of cyber security considerations that need to be addressed throughout the T&D domain—and even into the customer’s home. In this exclusive report, Department of Energy authors team up with industry experts to examine how to deal with the changes and challenges of securing the smart grid.
Smart-Grid Strategy: Quantifying Benefits
Modeling the value of various technologies and applications.
As utilities announce new smart-grid programs, they need a strategic method for quantifying benefits. Analytical models generate baseline benefit estimates and reveal big-picture trends. Decision makers need the best resources available to mitigate risks in choosing a smart-grid strategy.
Smart-Grid Stimulus
Utilities hurry up and wait to apply for grant money.
The American Recovery and Restructuring Act (ARRA, or the Recovery Act), signed into law in February, provides $4.5 billion in stimulus funding for programs aimed at “electricity delivery and energy reliability activities to modernize the electric grid.” This funding commitment, and swirl of industry and lawmaker activities since, has helped lift the smart-grid agenda out of the shadows of utility engineering departments and into the public’s broader view.
The Power to Reduce CO2 Emissions: The Full Portfolio
What the U.S. electricity sector must do to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in coming decades.
The large-scale CO2 reductions envisioned to stabilize, and ultimately reverse, global atmospheric CO2 concentrations present major technical, economic, regulatory and policy challenges. Reconciling these challenges with continued growth in energy demand highlights the need for a diverse, economy-wide approach.
The Rise of Distributed Energy Resources: Calling on the Lilliputians
Is DER competitive with traditional utility investments, and if so, what are the costs and benefits?
Utilities must make hard tradeoffs regarding which distribution investments offer the greatest value. How should they quantify DER as integrated into the grid?
The Top 10 Utility Tech Challenges
Innovation must play a key role in each company.
An EPRI vice president cites areas of concern in each part of the electricity value chain. How can IOUs overcome the formidable difficulties ahead of them?
Distributed Generation: Hastening Genco Obsolescence?
DER: This final installment of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's series on distributed energy resources investigates efficiency, the environment, and generation displacement.
Do distributed energy resources result in more pollution, or less? Our final installment of the series from Oak Ridge National Laboratory answers the question.
Distributed Generation: Who Benefits?
<font color="red">Distributed Generation</font>
Distributed Generation
In the first of three articles, experts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory examine the technical obstacles, deployment, and economic issues surrounding distributed generation.
The existing electric power delivery system is a critical part of this country's economic and societal infrastructure, and proposals to increase the role of distributed energy resources (DER) within this system are welcomed by few in the utility industry.
Are Distributed Energy Resources Gaining Traction?
A 10-year horizon: 2005 - 2015.
What does the current landscape look like for distributed energy resources? What applications and business models are being pursued by leading companies, and where can we expect to find DER in the next 10 years – in 2015?