Remarkable Energy Careers: Jim Fama
We talked with Jim Fama, retiring and on his last day at EEI, about his remarkable career.
Jim Fama was the Edison Electric Institute’s vice president for energy delivery since 2002.
Distribution
Parsing Poles and Towers
Customer cost allocations using the Minimum Distribution System method.
Accounting and Rate Design: How to use the Minimum Distribution Method to allocate local grid costs to end-use customers.
Got Green? Then Get Smart.
Why it’s the growth of renewable resources that makes the most compelling case for a smarter grid.
To manage the new instability, inherent in many renewable resources, it becomes necessary to introduce more intelligence and automation. That’s what makes the smart grid so compelling.
Microgrids: Where's the Beef?
Integration beats islanding, anyway you slice it.
A microgrid is a throwback. It’s anathema to what we know about economies of scale. Integration is what maximizes the ability of least-cost resources to reach load. By interfering with least-cost dispatch, microgrids can only raise energy costs.
Automation's Forgotten Midwife
Assuring operational readiness for your ADMS implementation.
New software is vital as electric distribution utilities are building a modern "grid of the future."
Business Model Mashup
Three ‘power plays’ for utilities seeking growth.
Threats to the utility business model mean that it’s time to make choices about future growth to protect cash flows while investing in new ventures.
Searching for Equilibrium
How to achieve it in the era of distributed energy
In the emerging era of distributed energy resources, we will find the distribution utility increasingly in the role of an integrator and enabler – more than their longstanding role as energy provider. Accordingly, the regulatory approach must go through its own structural shift to keep pace and restore the system to regulatory equilibrium.
Becoming Customer-Centric
Two utilities embrace technology and innovation.
Today the rise of customer-centric technology and innovation has created a whole new set of challenges. Advances have occurred in energy efficiency, demand response, distributed solar, energy storage, and electric vehicles, as well as smart grid infrastructure and analytics. Electric utilities have two basic choices: react to the agendas of the special interests or chart a path forward to create the most value for stakeholders and customers.
Distribution Optimization: Ready for Takeoff
Part 2: Key choices on the way forward.
Integrated Distribution Planning (IDP) – much like its bulk power system cousin, Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) – provides a useful starting point for regulators and utilities to begin thinking about how to optimize the distribution system.
New York Takes the Lead
No proposal is as radical – or as well thought out – as REV.
If the New York Rev is fully implemented, utility earnings would depend more on creating value for customers and achieving policy objectives.