The Long and Short of Grid Congestion
FTRs make hedging possible, but can PJM ensure full funding without playing favorites?
Financial traders believe PJM’s proposal discriminates since they are more likely to hold counter-flow FTRs.
Congestion
Solar Battle Lines
The fight over customer rooftops, grid funding, and net metering.
Renewable customer generation is growing and regulators should let incumbent regulated monopoly businesses and interests ahead of society and competition.
High Stakes at the High Court
U.S. Supreme Court to decide demand response case.
Cost-conscious commercial and industrial customers may be oblivious to the legal issues surrounding their energy choices, but their demand response providers are not. The U.S. Supreme Court will now decide whether those services will be regulated by the federal government or state utility commissions.
Invoice Enclosed
Having lost Entergy to MISO, the Southwest Power Pool seeks its pound of flesh.
Welcome to the age of RTO competition: region vs. region, grid vs. grid. It could well outdo the choice wars between retail energy suppliers that we thought were in our future.
Life in the Transco Age
The competitive transmission genie is out of the bottle.
FERC Orders 890 and 1000 have opened the doors to independent transcos, heralding an era of innovation to solve reliability and capacity problems.
Transmission Policy in Flux
More planning, fewer incentives, and a black swan on the horizon.
The transmission superhighway still needs major investments. Rate incentives were working -- until FERC started backing away from them. FERC should assert its authority more aggressively to promote the vision of a robust interstate grid.
Learning to Love Congestion
Competitive market problems and their implications for customers’ net costs.
In competitive power markets based on locational marginal pricing (LMP), the facts sometimes conflict with popular belief. Most notably: 1. When there’s congestion, the books don’t balance, and ratepayers always pay more than the generators receive. The difference is sometimes called “congestion cost.” 2. Congestion in a competitive market doesn’t necessarily increase ratepayers’ costs; and 3. Reductions in LMP are incomplete and sometimes misleading measures of economic benefits of transmission upgrades. These three facts and their implications should be considered in transmission planning, market design, tariffs, and system operations.