Solar at High Noon
Surplus generation at mid-day calls for long-duration energy storage.
Utility execs and PUCs should plan now to handle extensive solar penetration, including the significant overgeneration that can occur at mid-day.
Jerry Brown
Putting a Price on Carbon
How EPA can establish a U.S. GHG Program for the Electricity Sector.
With the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards expected in June 2014, many states are considering their own approaches to provide flexibility in meeting compliance requirements. Experience in North America to date provides policy guidance.
People (March 2011)
First Energy subsidiaries get new executives; Constellation names new treasurer, finance v.p., and CIO; Puget Energy gets new general counsel; plus senior staff changes at Dominion, Georgia Power, Parsons, California Energy Commission, Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, and others.
PURPA's Changing Climate
California defends its cogen feed-in tariff—complete with its own virtual carbon tax.
California’s new feed-in tariff (FIT) is creating a burgeoning market for green energy investments, but the policy has sparked a fierce battle over state authority to dictate wholesale power transactions. A federal case will determine whether the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act pre-empts states from requiring purchases that exceed utilities’ avoided cost.
Let's Schmooze Scott Sklar, Sunny Side Up
SCOTT SKLAR, WHO SHOWERS WITH SOLAR-HEATED water, who drinks his skim milk from his solar-powered refrigerator, who commutes via solar-powered car, who tells time by a solar-powered watch, who wears a sun-faced ring and sun-spotted tie, sweeps into a French restaurant on North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C.
Sklar, who has lived the Solar Energy Industries Association for more than a decade, is bald up top, but his hair sprouts out around that spot in grey-brown brillo. Glasses hug his eyes. His beard threatens to strangle him and his mustache pitches in.