Renewable

Climate, Carbon, Fuel, and the Future

The view from Oregon and Portland General Electric.

Fortnightly speaks with Jim Piro, president and CEO of Portland General Electric. Piro serves as a member of Oregon’s Global Warming Commission. He’s also active in the Electrification Coalition, a national group of business leaders advocating for policies that support electric vehicles.
Byline: 

Ken Silverstein

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EPA's Clean Power Plan

Charting a Path Forward

With respect to the Clean Power Plan, the question is whether EPA will address the major issues and reinforce its positions in advance of the anticipated legal challenges.
Byline: 

Steven A. Weiler

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Smart Gas Investment

As a bridge to a low-carbon future, natural gas can’t – and shouldn’t – meet every need.

Some describe natural gas generation as the “Swiss army knife” of technologies, as it can meet a variety of electric system needs. Yet while a Swiss army knife can prove handy, we don’t often use it when we have access to a well-equipped toolbox. It can introduce unnecessary costs and unacceptable risks.
Byline: 

Dr. Carl Linvill

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CEOs are Charged Up

But guiding their companies in times of change is a challenging task.

It’s a new era for utilities and their consumers. Today’s leaders are atop those economic, political and technological happenings.
Byline: 

Ken Silverstein and Herman Trabish

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Rooftop Solar 2.0

Hawaii and California grapple over net energy metering.

While the underlying questions in each state regarding net energy metering are much the same, the two PUC's will approach the issue from different perspectives.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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The Driving Ambition of Elon Musk

An electric car in every driveway, a battery in every garage.

Tesla’s Elon Musk is driving the electric car off the lot and onto the premises of America’s electric utilities, proposing to build and sell energy storage batteries on both a residential and grid-wide scale – ideas that the chief executive will fully flesh out at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in New Orleans this June.
Byline: 

Ken Silverstein

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Transactions (May 2015)

FuelCell Energy closed its definitive agreement to sell a 1.4-MW fuel cell power plant project to NRG Energy; FPL proposes to purchase CBAS Power for a price of $520.5 million; Renewable Energy Trust secured CAD $115MM in financing to acquire the 12.6 MW DiscoveryLight and 14.2 MW FotoLight projects from Canadian Solar; b secured $86.2MM in financing to acquire the 31.26 MW DC McHenry Solar PV Plant in Modesto, Calif. and the 13.1 MW DC Heber Solar PV project in Imperial County, Calif.; Peabody Energy completed its offering of $1.0 billion aggregate principal amount of 10% senior secured second lien notes due 2022; AES intends to offer $575 million aggregate principal amount of senior notes due 2025; And others ...

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Show Them the Money

Customer Connection: How to win over customers on energy efficiency.

New Research into energy efficiency, smart grid technologies and renewables will have utilities and regulators pleasantly surprised.
Byline: 

Rob Niccolai and Ashley Nicholls

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EPA, NERC and Reliability

Expect more analysis – more scenarios, more detail – as state compliance plans become better known.

As things stand today, even without the Clean Power Plan, we expect to see the retirement of more than 6 percent of North America’s generation capacity by 2030.
Byline: 

Thomas Burgess

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Energy Storage: The Utility's Best Friend

Perhaps the best way to think of energy storage is as an injection of much-needed intelligence for the grid. Energy storage will fine-tune the relationship between a bewilderingly complex asset base and a sprawling, diverse and demanding spectrum of customers in real time. Energy storage systems will act like energy grid computers and control systems, not just bulk repositories for electrons.
Byline: 

John Jung

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