FERC invites stakeholder views of market power review in merger, market pricing

September 26, 2016 -- FERC ’s Notice of Inquiry at its meeting last week was aimed at clarifying and and perhaps changing its policies aimed at discovering market power in two different, but not dissimilar areas: its merger reviews under Section 203 of the Federal Power Act and its market-based rate authority under Section 205. In his last meeting as a commission member, Commissioner Tony Clark admitt...

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MISO, both vertically-integrated & competitive, sets 3-year capacity auction

An OMS-MISO Survey showed that capacity needs are tightening across MISO. That prompted a response from the regional grid operator. While much of the region is served by vertically-integrated utilities—load-serving entities and are traditionally regulated by state agencies—MISO also includes two areas that have been restructured and get their power deliveries from merchant companies—competitive supp...

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Duke microgrid sails through two rough weather events; does wider rollout await?

Duke Energy has spent years developing a utility-controlled microgrid that can be assembled from standard parts and rolled out to customers. But the acid test for Duke’s McAlpine microgrid test site in Charlotte—a fire station connected to a substation with a 50-kW solar array and a 500-kW lithium-ion battery—came in two distinct events this year, according to a Greentech Media blog last week. The fi...

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Is going off-grid economic today? Perhaps in Australlia, not in US. But stay tuned

It’s not exactly a movement, but thousands of homes have invested in combined solar-battery storage systems in the US, while one million homes in sunny Australia alone will have adopted solar + storage by 2020. But is going off-grid the most effective choice a consumer can make? As renewables become more affordable, more and more people are cutting their ties to the grid—or never establishing o...

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SolarCity to roll out its integrated solar roof for the roofing market on Oct. 28

SolarCity , whose acquisition by Tesla may be delayed by shareholder lawsuits , plans to show off a new product, a roof that’s integrated with solar panels, Oct. 28 in San Francisco. Tesla CEO and SolarCity chairman Elon Musk made the announcement on Twitter Thursday morning, saying the combined company would unveil a solar roof with an integrated battery and a Tesla charger. Musk announced plans for Sol...

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FERC adopts GMD rule; bids Clark adieu

By Kennedy Maize

September 23, 2016—The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday, Sept. 22, unanimously adopted a final rule establishing a new reliability standard to address the threat to the grid from geomagnetic disturbances (GMD). FERC has been working on the issue since the fall of 2010, Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur noted at the meeting. A second item found FERC seeking advice on a possible ...

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Good news comes slowly. The long, inevitable rise of the electric vehicle

Are electric vehicle sales in the US likely to poke along, growing slowly but lacking the acceleration in sales that the cars possess on the road? Or are they headed for a bust-out year, as buyers discover their quickness and easy, clean operation.

EV sales could be explained by the typical S-curve of adoption: a slow start, with only early adopters and niche markets buying. Then, more rapid growth...

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Renewables or nuclear: What’s the vision?

The public policy community is solidly on board with the proposition that we must stop emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But it’s not enough that we simply reduce the level of emissions. Rather, as soon as practicable, we must curb fossil fuel emissions in every sector of our economy—in the transportation (now the chief emitter) and buildings sectors, as well as the energy sector.

That...

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Replacing Diablo Canyon with safer, more flexible options is a better choice

Michael Shellenberger , an acclaimed environmentalist and co-founder of the pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute , is determined to make Californians and the world see the error in a joint proposal’s plan to close the 2,200 Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Shellenberger and his allies go so far as to claim that nuclear energy is “clean energy.”

There is a broad global consensus climate change must be checked ...

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Will distributed resources end the distribution natural monopoly? If so, then what?

The electricity industry seems to be plagued by a multitude of “interesting problems.” They’re problems that can’t—or at least shouldn’t –be ignored. While after nearly 40 years we are still grappling with the consequences of the energy supply sector of the industry becoming competitive, with passage of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (as evidenced by several excellent panels in FERC’s t...

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What decided Diablo Canyon’s fate?

As an outsider, weighing the things known and not known behind PG&E’s decision to retire its two-unit, 2,240-MW Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, shocking as it was, in the end it wasn’t surprising.

Among the things that are both known—and unknown—about the remaining years for California’s last surviving nuclear plant are these:

Relicensing . As the project’s existing licenses expire in November 2024 ...

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Rethinking the climate change challenge from a deeper, wider position

Cambridge University engineering professor M.J. Kelly has written a paper that challenges much of today’s accepted wisdom about the climate change threat.

It addresses that problem but also steps back from it to look into the abyss posed by a related problem: the need to supply a growing, changing world with energy and how best to do it—thoughtfully and conscientiously.

Reading the paper was unsettlin...

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