How an environmentally friendly power source can solve the fossil-fuel supply-and-demand gap.
The challenge over the next several decades will be completion of an economically competitive fusion power plant. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is paving the way.
DER: This final installment of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's series on distributed energy resources investigates efficiency, the environment, and generation displacement.
Distributed Generation
In the first of three articles, experts at Oak Ridge National Laboratory examine the technical obstacles, deployment, and economic issues surrounding distributed generation.
The existing electric power delivery system is a critical part of this country's economic and societal infrastructure, and proposals to increase the role of distributed energy resources (DER) within this system are welcomed by few in the utility industry.
Pressure for national legislation builds as the Northeastern U.S. goes it alone and carbon trading takes off in the European Union.
People
New Opportunities:
Jack Hawks, EPSA's current vice president of public affairs and planning, took on additional responsibilities as EPSA's acting vice president of policy. He replaced Julie Simon, who left the association to join Constellation Energy Group as a managing director. Hawks previously was vice president, Regulatory Policy, for PG&E National Energy Group.
ECM
Demand-Side Management & Metering Tech
Combining real-time usage data with the newest technology can earn benefits for utilities.
Some amount of confusion on the part of end-users of electricity is inevitable as the electricity industry evolves. Confusion seems to be a necessary ingredient of change. At PJM Interconnection, we see fusion as the answer to confusion. First is the fusion of technology-both computing and communications technology-with the electric industry.
The grid does not need a Marshall Plan for new investment.
We don't know what caused the Aug. 14 blackout, but somehow we know that our transmission system needs $50 billion to $100 billion in investment and upgrades. And utilities need higher returns to raise that kind of money. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.
The reality is that we aren't short $50 billion or $100 billion in our transmission system. The study said to support that proposition just doesn't do the job.
A review of which technologies and companies stand to win and lose as a result of the 2003 blackout.
Mishap, human error, and malice regularly crash the electric system. We have lurched from the Western economic power crisis of 1999-2000 to the Eastern reliability power crisis of 2003. Neither more studies nor more blackouts have changed what's been built-an excessive quantity of large generation plants dependent on relatively few major transmission lines. On its current course, the grid's inevitable destination is disaster.
Demand Response: An Overview of Enabling Technologies