Demand Disruption Ahead
Utilities should think hard about business models.
Death spiral? Maybe not. But retail load – as served by utilities – will surely fall.
Regulation
Segment and Conquer
To measure efficiency, you needn’t count every customer.
True believers don’t respond much to urging – they will save energy regardless. So why not just ignore them in measuring the success of energy efficiency programs?
Utility Commissioners and Who They Trust
A survey sample of regulators on their dealings with peers, colleagues, staffers, and stakeholders.
How do regulators engage their staffs and colleagues? How do they view their peers in other states? The utilities they regulate? A unique view based on a sample survey of former state utility commissioners.
The Powhatan Matter
Market manipulation versus the right to make a profit.
Harvard professor Bill Hogan claims FERC is wrong to find market manipulation where traders simply make profits on market defects known to all.
Results-Based Regulation
A more dynamic approach to grid modernization.
The utility’s role is changing, and regulation must change along with it – to spur innovation and respond to evolving customer needs. Modernizing the industry will require a dynamic approach.
Catching Fire
Climate policy heats up after the Great Recession.
GHG rules are coming soon. What happens next will depend on how states react.
Utility 2.0 and the Dynamic Microgrid
Superstorm disruption calls for a new utility architecture.
When microgrids are optimized in a smart grid, they’ll usher in a new era of utility resilience and flexibility. Get ready for dynamic microgrids.
Game Changers
State regulators address transformative forces.
In Fortnightly’s Regulators’ Roundtable, commissioners from Idaho, Illinois, and Minnesota consider transformative forces and the regulatory response.
A Trip to RIIO in Your Future?
Great Britain’s latest innovation in grid regulation.
Great Britain’s electric regulator takes performance-based regulation to a new, more complex level, weighing policy choices against attendant costs.
Energiewende
Nuclear fear and Germany’s headlong plunge into renewable energy.
On a recent trip to Germany to study the country’s energy policy, the phrase “energy transition,” or “energiewende” as the Germans say, was on everyone’s mind.