POPS Is Here to Stay
Reports of Plain Old Power Service’s death greatly exaggerated
The vast majority of electric consumers want reliable, clean, reasonably priced electricity, and little else.
distributed energy
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.
Consumers Want What?
Rather than accept the rhetoric, let’s find out.
What’s missing is asking consumers to consider realistic tradeoffs between two characteristics of electricity rather than the desirability of a single characteristic in isolation.
A Formula for Grid Modernization?
How is it going?
Ann McCabe is a commissioner at the Illinois Commerce Commission. The views expressed in this article are her own.
Five years have passed since Commonwealth Edison and Ameren Illinois elected to participate in the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act, which authorized $3.2 billion in grid hardening and smart meter investments. As a commissioner at the Illinois Commerce Commission, I am often asked: How is it going?
Electricity, Economic Efficiency and Growth
Building a fully integrated grid is the next great opportunity to realize higher levels of economic efficiency and prosperity.
A cost benefit analysis in electricity typically achieves assessment of future costs but usually considers only a single type of benefit: operational cost savings.
New Regulatory Paradigm Needed Now
The time is now for establishing concrete rules, roles and responsibilities for utilities and other participants.
Driven by policy directives over which utilities have little control, DERs will remain both a threat and opportunity until regulators agree on a new paradigm to support distributed energy resources.
You Say You Want a REVolution
It’s difficult to assess the REV promise because it’s difficult to figure out what REV is really about
Let’s be honest. Does anyone know what New York’s REV (“Reforming the Energy Vision”) really is? Other than the most hyped regulatory initiative since California restructuring some 20 years ago?
Community Storage: Coming to a Home Near You
A readily available option for storage may be coordinating existing devices that have untapped storage capacity
Despite battery technology’s ability to grab clean tech media headlines, industry still lacks a clear, practical, cost-effective path.
Integrated Energy
Distributed energy + distributed controls = distributed benefits.
Utility business models are at risk in a world of distributed energy resources and local intelligent controls, such as microgrids. But the real revolution may lie in customer expectations, where third parties threaten to take ownership.
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.