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Major Articles
Additional Articles
20/20 Visions for 2020: Power at the Crossroads – Which Way Forward?
by Eric M. Markell
We can make our power infrastructure more efficient and reliable without massive subsidies and greater federal indebtedness. Our outdated regulatory system stands squarely in the way. It’s time to end the logjam.
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would like to give you, the reader, an opportunity to stop reading this paper. Just put it down. You might want to check your e-mail,...
Riders, Trackers, Surcharges, Pre-Approvals and Decoupling: How Do They Affect the Cost of Equity?
by Scott Hempling
Regulators needing to estimate the effect of risk on the cost of equity will be tempted to ‘pick a number.’ This paper recommends that decision-makers identify and weigh as many relevant factors as possible before choosing that number.
In an embedded cost rate case, the commission sets the utility’s annual revenue requirement by predicting expenses, capital expenditures...
Electric Reliability: Stuff and Nonsense Happens
by Kennedy Maize
While industry warns of outages if proposed environmental rules go into effect as planned – a result EPA pooh-poohs – the more serious reliability problems the nation faces may be structural and systemic. Leadership is needed.
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he US electricity system faces two serious reliability threats. Neither appears easy to fix anytime soon. The first, short-term issue is th...
20/20 Visions for 2020: Customer-Focused Strategies Are Public Power’s Key to Success in 2020
by Mark Crisson
In an era of ever-increasing consumer empowerment, public power looks to its close roots to the communities it serves to deliver the services its consumer-owners desire.
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ll electric utilities – consumer-owned or investor-owned – need to have adopted customer-centric strategies to succeed in the coming decade. Customer focus is a particular hallmark of the public power bu...
Should Government Fund Innovative Energy Technologies?
by Robert Marritz
In this ‘silly season’ of electoral politics, investigations of the Department of Energy’s clean energy loan guarantee program is apt to produce more heat than light. It’s much too early to call the program a success or a failure. Clean-tech is a long-term proposition
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ast week we published a story which drew upon David Gold’s blog for The Energy Collective titled “ Obama ...
FERC’s Order No. 1000: More Questions than Answers
by Jennifer Morrissey
Order 1000 raises more questions than it provides answers. But by setting forth a process and forcing stakeholders to come together, the Commission has taken an important first step in resolving the country’s growing need for transmission investment.
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his summer, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a rule several years in the making designed to set in motion a...
Finding the Limits to Wind Generation
by Ken Dragoon
Accommodating variable and less-predictable wind generation is changing how power systems operate, but the changes are increasingly manageable and can benefit the entire grid.
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t midnight the morning of May 18, 2011 the Bonneville Power Administration ordered wind generation on its transmission system to cease generating power. The action was not unexpected; BPA had issued its “ Enviro...
20/20 Visions for 2020: Building a Modernized Grid for Our Future
by Thomas R. Kuhn
The 21st Century grid we are developing will revolutionize the relationship between electric utilities and their customers, ramp up efficiency at both the grid and customer level, modernize our transportation options, and improve the environment. Hard work will make it happen.
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or any electric utility, the most important job is supplying its customers with a relia...
News
Blue Ribbon panel sets process to solve N-waste issue; former critics cheer
The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future yesterday released its final report to the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, setting out recommendations for creating a safe, long-term solution for managing and disposing of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The report noted that the nation’s nuclear waste management policy has been troubled for decades and is at ...
Does checkerboard state regulation hinder smart grid development?
When viewing delays in implementing a smart grid, there’s a tendency to blame the utility industry for “dragging its feet.” Ask industry insiders, though, and you get a different perspective. To utility leaders and experts, the single greatest roadblock to smart grid in the United States is regulation.
A recent smart grid forum in Washington, D.C., cited “lack of uniformity” in regulation...
Big solar and wind firms: We can compete without subsidies
Renewable energy companies are approaching the point where they can generate electricity at a price competitive with fossil-fuels without subsidies, the biggest wind and solar manufacturers said.
Suntech Power Holdings CEO Zhengrong Shi said solar will reach parity with fossil fuels on electric grids by 2015. Vestas Wind systems expects its turbines to compete without incentives “in the coming year...
Pa. PUC to extend efficiency program; PennFuture group drops complaint
The PennFuture Energy Center for Enterprise and the Environment yesterday withdrew its petition asking the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to begin the process of extending the energy savings law (Act 129), rather than waiting for the legal deadline of Nov. 30, 2013. The decision came after PennFuture met with PUC leadership and staff during which PUC Chair Robert Powelson expressed his str...
Obama: To save, waste less energy
The truest comment by the President in his State of the Union address? One supported by study after study: "The easiest way to save money is to waste less energy."
The president’s vision for “an economy built to last” makes energy efficiency a cornerstone. He asked Congress to send him a bill that incorporates energy efficiency and creates jobs. Congress already has one in the...
CO2 emissions fall in US, rise globally
US carbon dioxide emissions continue to track lower than year 2000 levels, the Energy Information Administration reported on Monday, extending this century’s downward trend in US emissions. The new data rebut assertions that the US needs to impose new restrictions on coal-fired power plants and other sources of carbon dioxide emissions.
The EIA reports that US emissions rose more than 15 percen...
Utahns unite to fight 3000 MW nuke
River runners, conservation advocates, farmers and other Utah stakeholders say they will continue to fight plans to build a 3,000 MW nuclear reactor near Green River following a decision by Utah state engineer Kent Jones to approve a water rights transfer to a nuclear power company.
Blue Castle Holdings hopes to build nuclear reactors on the Green River and sell the power to Southern...
EU supergrid would boost renewables
Europe is the world leader in renewable energy generation, but as with all renewable energy sources they face the problem of reliability. One way of overcoming this limitation and ensuring that power supply will be constant is to have expensive, traditional, fossil-fuelled power stations to generate electricity whilst conditions are unfavorable for the renewable source; but this almost makes the w...
