SDGE

Digest

(January 2013) Dominion Virginia Power contracts Alstom for HRSGs at 1,300-MW Brunswick County station; Entergy acquires KGen plants; San Diego Gas & Electric installs new outage management system; ChargePoint enters reseller agreement with Service Solutions; Saft to install battery storage project at High Wind project in Saskatchewan; NRG’s eVgo finalizes plans for California charging network; plus contracts and announcements from ABB, ADT, Elster, Itron, ElectroIndustries, Opower, Panasonic, FirstEnergy, PacifiCorp, and others.

Demand Growth and the New Normal

Five forces are putting the squeeze on electricity consumption.

It’s tempting to attribute the recent slowdown in electricity demand growth entirely to the Great Recession, but consumption growth rates have been declining for at least 50 years. The new normal rate of demand growth likely will be about half of its historic value, with demand rising by less than 1 percent per year. This market plateau calls for a new utility strategy.