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Coronavirus Challenge

A Special Report

For this special feature on utilities and utility regulators meeting the challenge of the coronavirus crisis, Public Utilities Fortnightly went to two of the top experts on the grid's resilience. We like to call Scott Aaronson the most important individual in America, only half in jest. Scott leads the teams at the Edison Electric Institute focused on cyber and physical security and storm response and recovery and is the EEI's point man in this current crisis.

Byline: 

Steve Mitnick

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Fortnightly Electricity Report, April 1-14

The virus crisis' impact on the nation's electricity usage, peak hourly demand, coal and zero-emission power plant market shares are the headlines of this first edition of the Fortnightly Electricity Report. After two weeks of shelter-in-place virtually nationally, how was the electric grid transformed? Steve Mitnick and Alexandra Revel of Public Utilities Fortnightly break down the numbers nationally and by the thirteen regions and highlight the huge effects on greenhouse gas emissions particularly and the unprecedented mix of electric generation.

Corona Chaos

Most everything is different now because of this corona thing. It’s corona chaos and even some of the constants of utility service and regulation are anything but. Like commercial consumption of electricity. Like residential consumption. Egads! Like bill collection and resilience planning and workforce management and regulatory procedure and well, a lot of other constants — heretofore — in our ways of working.

Happy Birthday Zen!

Though we cannot celebrate Zenobe Gramme’s birthday April 4 with a big party jam-packed with friends, we will raise a glass to the great inventor of the electric motor. There had been toy-sized motors before 1873. But when Zen and his sidekick Hippolyte Fontaine – Hipp for short – accidentally reversed an electric generator that year, they happened upon a real motor to power the second industrial revolution.