Energy People: Lawrence Jones

We talked with Lawrence Jones, the Edison Electric Institute's Vice President for International Programs

Lawrence Jones joined the Edison Electric Institute a year ago as the association's vice president for international programs. He had been North America vice president for utility innovation and infrastructure resilience at Alstom Grid Inc., and also vice president for policy, regulatory affairs and industry relations for Alstom.

Energy People: Ben Fowke

We talked with Ben Fowke, who leads Xcel Energy

Ben Fowke and Steve Mitnick discuss Xcel’s rapidly growing wind resources. They made up 17 percent of the energy provided to Xcel’s customers in 2015, generating more power than nuclear and nearly as much as natural gas. By 2020, Xcel projects that 24 percent of its energy will come from wind.

In Only the Second Period of Low Real Rates and Bills

How Should We Manage and Regulate Now?

Electric bills this March were just a tick off the pace of the all-time low. In this unique period, how should we regulate utilities? Should we correct course? Should we allow greater growth of non-fuel costs to – let’s say – buy some more reliability?

Someone Must Be Doing Something Right

Residential customers are paying 2.1% less for every kilowatt-hour than two years ago, and commercial customers are paying 5.5% less.

On Tuesday, the Energy Department released electricity industry data for September. The average price for residential electric service was 12.87 cents per kilowatt-hour. For commercial service, it was 10.70 cents.

Let’s see how the price of electric service has come down, first ignoring general inflation, and then appropriately including it.

Ignoring general inflation, September electric service for residential customers was 1.2 percent lower than in September 2015 and 0.6 percent lower than in September 2014. 

New House Sales Drive Electric Sales

The recent housing surge, in the South particularly, could drive up the growth of electricity sales.

The federal government reported last week that new single-family house sales were up 17.8 percent in October, compared with October 2015. 

Trends in sales of new single-family houses drive trends in sales of electricity. 

For every new single-family house, in the South especially, monthly electricity sales increase almost two thousand kilowatts-hours on average. 

This is a large increment. It would net out, for example, energy efficiency improvements of twenty existing houses of a hundred kilowatts-hours monthly. 

Dripping Electricity

It leaked, she contended, out of empty sockets if the wall switch had been left on.

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

December Birthdays

Edward Hammer, Bertha Lamme Feicht, William Merrill, Marcel Deprez

Hammer came up with the idea of making the fluorescent into a spiral in the shape of, well, a bulb.

Challenging Common Excuses for Ignoring Grid Analytics

Heart of Digital Transformation Strategy

The three barriers to grid analytics – fear, uncertainty and doubt – can be overcome. Indeed, if utilities want to remain competitive, they should be. Where companies have moved ahead with successful implementations, the benefits are manifest.

Architecture for the Integrated Grid

Built to Last Means Built to Change

To realize the full value of distributed resources and to serve all consumers at the highest standards of quality and reliability, the grid needs to expand its scope. What is needed is an intentional architecture that enables communication and coordination between devices and systems, regardless of their manufacturer.