Has Retail Choice Delivered on its Promises?
Participation rates, customers’ bills, meaningful choice
Retail choice might have reduced retail electricity prices if it allowed customers to escape stranded costs, but that didn’t happen.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
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.
Order 745: Challenge to Plain Old Power Markets
The Order will extend application of load-reducing technologies and marketing to a new class of services.
The marginal external benefits provided by demand response prove more than sufficient to overcome concerns that paying LMP was too expensive.
Grid Reform to Date
How the feds opened the supply side.
The sheer scale of growth put a ‘stake through the heart’ of the old view.
Our Nuclear Lifeline
Learning from the tragedy of Vermont Yankee.
Learning from the tragedy of Vermont Yankee. Can merchant nuclear operators compete in the market place with cheap natural gas and subsidized renewables?
Digest (January 2015)
FERC approved the proposed merger of Exelon and Pepco Holdings; SunEdison and TerraForm Power agreed to acquire First Wind for $2.4 billion; NorthWestern Energy closed on its $900 million purchase of facilities from PPL Montana; Siemens Energy Management partnered with Microsoft and FuelCell Energy to develop the nation's first zero-carbon, waste-to-energy data center; ABB commissioned a power solution that will control power flow and enhance grid stability in Michigan; AES Southland was awarded a 20-year PPA by Southern California Edison to provide 100 MW of interconnected battery-based energy storage; Renewable Energy Systems Americas developed what will be the largest, fully commercial energy storage projects in North America; Westinghouse Electric, China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp., and Electricity Generation Co. agreed to develop and construct a four-unit nuclear power plant site in the Republic of Turkey. And others ...
Regulatory Roundup
2004 FERC roundup: Path 15 Upgrade; Gas Bypass Pipeline; Power Line Communications; Gen Station Power Needs; ISO Retail Service; Renewable Energy Portfolios; Gas Supply Risk; Fuel Cost Hedging; Utility Supply Solicitations; Provider of Last Resort; Coal Seam Gas; Deceptive Marketing Practices; Renewable Portfolio Standards.
Public Power Road Show
Sue Kelly’s ‘world tour’ brings APPA home.
There’s no one in the energy industry – and I mean absolutely no one – who is more on-message than Sue Kelly, now winding up her first year as CEO of the American Public Power Association.
Digest (December 2014)
NRG Energy and MGM Resorts International completed installation of the world's largest rooftop solar array on a convention center;
Southern California Edison on November 5 announced the largest purchase of grid-connected energy storage in U.S. history. NRG Energy acquired Pure Energies Group; Duke Energy Progress filed with FERC for approval to purchase $1.2 billion in generating assets;
The U.S. Department of Energy authorized Bechtel to resume engineering work at a facility that will treat some of the nation's liquid radioactive waste; Burns & McDonnell plans to develop a grid stability awareness system;
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the launch of New York's first energy management network operations center. And others...
Planning vs. Partiality
A case study from PJM on competitive procurement of regional transmission under FERC Order 1000.
What happens to FERC Order 1000, and its vaunted quest for fairness and transparency, when regional grid planners ask for competitive bids to solve a pressing transmission need, but then modify some of the project proposals, unilaterally, in an honest effort to improve them?