Costs Fixed Depending on Timeframe
As we head towards a fixed cost electricity system
All costs are fixed. All costs are variable. How is that possible? As Albert Einstein might say, it depends on the reference of time.
Fortnightly Magazine - July 2016
Giving Credit Where Credit is Due
Ensuring State Emission Reduction in Clean Power Plan
Strong public policy favors giving states credit for the carbon reductions they make while the Plan’s legality is pending.
Order 745: A Time Bomb for Electricity Consumers
One of the worst orders FERC has ever produced
Order 745 overcompensates demand response, unduly discriminates against wholesale suppliers, sanctions and institutionally enforces the exercise of monopsony market power, and will ultimately raise electricity prices.
Energy Cloud Playbook
Building Competitive Advantage for Grid of the Future
The pace and impact of change in the energy industry are unrelenting. Utilities must rethink many of the assumptions that have anchored strategic planning to date. This requires that utilities play both defense as well as offense to remain competitive.
The Consumer-Centric Utility
Empowering Consumers while Managing Risk and Optimizing Assets
Electric utilities do not simply sell a commodity. They sell safe, affordable, reliable and clean electric service. The “Consumer-Centric Utility” business model provides a viable framework for utilities while enabling new products and services that meet growing consumer expectations.
Regulators Can Win the Trifecta with Residential Demand Charges
Advanced metering and demand charges give efficient and equitable price signals to customers.
The wide deployment of smart meters gives regulatory policy-makers a rare opportunity to change residential rate design. This can be done in a way that improves economic efficiency, and utility consumer and shareholder equity. Here we provide ten questions that should be asked by policy-makers, as well as some guidance in deriving the answers.
Geomagnetic Disturbances and the Grid
Harmonics Studies Needed to Assess Vulnerabilities
NERC recently issued reliability standards in response to the potential for geomagnetic disturbances to disrupt operations and possibly damage assets. The power industry appears to have placed undue emphasis on GMD’s threat to transformers. Our studies and those by others have underscored the value to transmission organizations in assessing their vulnerability to harmonics.
Energy Company's Pipe Dream
Why $3.3 Billion Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline Was Defeated
It’s a David and Goliath story. But instead of a slingshot, David in this case fired off a stiff legal challenge to defeat the giant.
Ratemaking and the Campaign Against Rooftop Solar
Rate design should balance consumer and investor interests.
Regulators should ensure that changes to rate design seek to balance consumer and utility interests. Rates that are intended to insulate utilities from economic and technological change while providing no benefits to consumers ought to be considered unjust, unreasonable, and unduly discriminatory.
Public Weighs In on Market Conditions Threatening Nuclear Power Plants
Examining the problem for nuclear power shows value in informing the public.
What should be done to create market conditions to prevent the loss of the nation’s only zero-carbon large-scale baseload electricity source?