Rooftop Parity
Solar for Everyone, including Utilities
An independent system operator for the distribution network could open more opportunities for distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar.
RTO
Rent the Rooftop
A new front opens in the solar wars.
Has Arizona Public Service found a way to cheat the death spiral?
From ISO to DSO
Imagining a new construct – an independent system operator for the distribution network.
A new utility industry construct – the Distribution System Operator (DSO) – could help maximize the benefits of distributed energy resources.
Appendix: Opening the Black Box
Appendix:
Mathematical Structure of the Methodology
In this appendix to “Opening the Black Box,” (Fortnightly, January 2014), we briefly describe the basic components of the models for managing aging assets: how to represent the condition of such assets and the outcome of replacement, maintenance, and testing decisions.
The model structure is one of optimal control with dynamic state variables and uncertainty. Let
Opening the Black Box
A new approach to utility asset management.
Creating a dynamic statistical approach to designing an overall strategy for utility asset management.
Category Error
The trouble with treating grid projects as market players in New York’s capacity auction.
Transmission is not generation. Yet New York ISO makes grid projects qualify as competitive, like gen plants, to get to play in its capacity market.
Dodd-Frank and Electric Utilities
Understanding the new mosaic of commodities trading regulations.
Compliance with Dodd-Frank might not be as complicated as feared; however, companies must be vigilant in order to maintain the relevant exemptions.
Innovation Mandate
Meeting the just-and-reasonable standard in a time of change.
Who can say for sure if markets are working? The landscape keeps shifting.
Game Changers
State regulators address transformative forces.
In Fortnightly’s Regulators’ Roundtable, commissioners from Idaho, Illinois, and Minnesota consider transformative forces and the regulatory response.
Sound and Fury
How NIPSCO feels leaned on.
Northern Indiana Public Service, the MISO member sandwiched between PJM’s Ohio territory and its noncontiguous Chicago outpost, feels particularly aggrieved by the failure of the MISO-PJM Joint Operating Agreement, approved by FERC in 2004, to facilitate cross-border grid projects to relieve constraints along the ragged and interlaced seam that separates the two regions.