Plunging Wind Into the Grid
The California ISO's intermittent resource program addresses a key market barrier to wind power: how to schedule wind energy in forward markets.
CEC
Sowing the seeds for California Crisis II?
Experts say that many of the new policies by the PUC and the state legislature seem to be putting the Golden State on track for more blackouts.
Experts say that many of the new policies by the PUC and the state legislature seem to be putting the Golden State on track for more blackouts.
Although California's electricity crisis reached its worst point two years ago, utilities, consumers, and other market participants continue to fear a recurrence of the supply shortages and price spikes that added $40 billion to the cost of electricity over a horrific 13-month period.
The Barriers to Real-Time Pricing: Separating Fact From Fiction
Real-time pricing has been hindered by the misperception that a shift to RTP will create new types of risks, without creating benefits for utilities or customers.
FERC's California Caps: Just Smoke and Mirrors?
Industry experts debate whether so-called “price mitigation measures” miraculously solved the California crisis.
Wholesale electricity prices are lower in California than they were last May, before FERC implemented price caps. But there is widespread disagreement over whether the caps were the cause of the lower prices, or merely coincidental with other downward pressures.
Declaring Emergencies in California: The Realities of ISO Operation
An independent system operator's view on the energy crisis and the realities of maintaining reliability.
Declaring Emergencies in California: The Realities of ISO Operation
Distributed Generation: Doomed by Deployment Details?
The industry makes strides, but messy issues like air quality and building codes could be showstoppers.
News Analysis
California has a plan to track green electricity, but can it be trusted?
All electricity is the same, but the California Energy Commission wants to change that. It plans a system to authenticate the source of electricity to allow consumers to buy power from specific generators. Standard documents called "Certificates of Specific Generation" would certify financial transactions. Presumably, the plan would help document the authenticity of non-generic electricity products, such as green power.
Stranded Costs for a "Hungry" Utility
Even the FERC's own lawyers urge a new rule when a customer leaves a utility that already has too little capacity.
In a brief filed Aug. 18, staff counsel Theresa Burns and Diane Schratwieser urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to rethink its policy on wholesale stranded costs when a customer threatens to leave but the utility is so short of generating capacity that it can easily make up any lost revenues by reallocating the reserves to other native load customers at prevailing, regulated embedded-cost retail rates.
Electric Meter Deregulation: Potholes on the Road to Plug-and-Play
NO MORE METER MONOPOLY?
So they say. Many believe that utility control over electric metering exerts a chilling effect on retail choice in energy. They claim that competitive energy service providers cannot earn a high-enough margin on the commodity alone, but must offer companion services - metering, billing and value-added options.
Yet the road to competitive metering is pitted with potholes. Utilities, ESPs and private meter vendors and manufacturers can be found arguing over a raft of issues.
Green Electricity: It's in the Eye of the Beholder
SOME PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW WHAT "GREEN POWER" means (em and, by extension, "environmentally friendly." Does that mean low emissions, including nuclear energy? Is renewable energy automatically green? Should the simple fact of compliance with all standards imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency afford the right to advertise power generation as green?
Consumers, agencies and state and federal officials want truth in advertising. Proponents of alternative generation claim consumers are willing to pay more for cleaner, greener energy.