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Energy Cloud Playbook

Building Competitive Advantage for Grid of the Future

The pace and impact of change in the energy industry are unrelenting. Utilities must rethink many of the assumptions that have anchored strategic planning to date. This requires that utilities play both defense as well as offense to remain competitive.
Byline: 

Mackinnon Lawrence and Jan Vrins

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Chasing the Uncatchable

Why trying to fix mandatory capacity markets is like trying to win a game of Whack-A-Mole (Parts I & II)

FERC has little to show for more than a decade of tinkering with mandatory capacity markets.
Byline: 

Delia D. Patterson and Harvey L. Reiter

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FERC Chasing the Uncatchable

Trying to fix mandatory capacity markets like trying to win at Whack-A-Mole, Part II

The proposals do not mandate participation in mandatory auction markets, much less try to set artificial floors on seller bids.
Byline: 

Delia Patterson and Harvey Reiter

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Life Without Building Block 4

Energy Efficiency under EPA’s Final Clean Power Plan.

Energy efficiency remains the most cost-effective route to compliance with the Clean Power Plan. In the final Clean Power Plan rule issued August 3, 2015, EPA did not include Energy Efficiency in the calculations used to develop state targets. However, EPA and the White House have made it abundantly clear that energy efficiency remains just as viable a compliance option as before.
Byline: 

John Hargrove

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Distributed Generation

Disruptive Technology or Regulatory Challenge?

Distributed generation marks a set of emerging technologies requiring creativity from utilities and regulators in introducing laws, policies, and economic incentives – to ensure that revenue streams are captured and that cost recovery reflects market reality.
Byline: 

Rob Neumann and Ralph Zarumba

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Energy Storage: The Utility's Best Friend

Perhaps the best way to think of energy storage is as an injection of much-needed intelligence for the grid. Energy storage will fine-tune the relationship between a bewilderingly complex asset base and a sprawling, diverse and demanding spectrum of customers in real time. Energy storage systems will act like energy grid computers and control systems, not just bulk repositories for electrons.
Byline: 

John Jung

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$9 Billion at Risk

If PJM markets should lose demand response as a capacity resource.

The AEMA sees the self-help DR revolution as a key to America’s recent industrial renaissance: “If demand response is removed from wholesale markets,” the group says, then “the electric grid is back to the rotary phone.”
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Utility System Hardening

Taking Resiliency One Step Further

An independent system operator for the distribution network could allow utilities to invest in rooftop solar behind the meter and within territory.
Byline: 

Mike Hervey

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Intelligent Protection

Local network security in the age of microgrids and distributed generation.

With the local grid infused with distributed generation, static relay settings must yield to a more dynamic approach to ensure network security.
Byline: 

Bijoy Chatt and Ken Horne

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Accentuate the Positive

A practical guide to explaining the value of the smart grid.

Despite challenges, grid modernization is paying off for customers. Smart grid progress depends on clarifying the vision and communicating value.
Byline: 

Patty Durand

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