A new service that tracks wholesale electricity prices in real time is designed to build consumers’ understanding of how power is generated and how it gets to them.
The Electricity Price Ticker, launched on April 17 by the grid operator PJM Interconnection and the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Institute for Urban Research, provides pricing updates every five minutes for wholesale electricity in the southeastern Pennsylvania territory covered by PECO. Keep reading →
As consumers we have an abundance of choices. We can choose among competing stores selling competing products. If we don’t want to drive to the store, we can go online and purchase what we need and have it delivered to our door.
We have choices among phone and Internet service providers, and choices among devices competing to provide phone and Internet services. We’ve come to take for granted choices among competing providers for just about every product and service we consume. Keep reading →
Last September, Breaking Energy named five cleantech IPO‘s that were set to break the charts and change the game for renewable energy on the stock market. One of those five was Brightsource.
But despite the hype that had some industry insiders calling the BrightSource IPO the possible start to a cleantech gold rush, the thermal solar company cancelled its initial public offering last week due to what the company said were “adverse market conditions.” Keep reading →
The chair of the California Air Resources Board, yesterday brushed away concerns that the state’s cap and trade program had failed to give the energy industry enough market certainty.
Mary Nichols told delegates at the Navigating the American Carbon World conference in San Francisco yesterday said she saw no problem with traders in the US power markets adopting a “wait and see mode” on whether the pioneering scheme would begin next year. Keep reading →
Ontario’s largest power distributor – Hydro One – is looking to transform the province’s aging electrical system into a state of the art power delivery network. The utility recently selected IBM and Telvent to lead the charge toward a more energy efficient and reliable 21st century power grid.
Built in the 1950′s, Ontario’s electric grid took a centralized approach to power delivery, but the changing nature of electricity generation and transmission, with distributed sources becoming more prevalent, requires a more versatile grid design. Keep reading →
A man looks at the “world’s smallest washing machine” at the International Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, Nevada
Thousands of Californians now have at least one new, energy-saving appliance in their home, thanks to the state’s Cash for Appliances rebate program that recently drew to a close. The program, which started two years ago and ended last month, resulted in 178,000 household appliances, water heaters and cooling systems being recycled and replaced with high-efficiency models, the state said. Keep reading →
Smart grid technology benefits everyone from utilities to consumers and a business case can be made for the large capital investment required to get us there.
That’s the message eMeter Co-Founder and CTO, Larsh Johnson gave Breaking Energy during a recent interview. Energy and infrastructure giant Siemens acquired eMeter in January 2012. Keep reading →
Energy markets have transformed over the past decade in an accelerating process driven by a mix of deregulation, information technology and shifting fuel economics.
Managing the volatile risks that come with those changes has sparked a proliferation of hedging products and boosted volume on major exchanges that offer clarity and a degree of financial reassurance for energy companies traditionally reliant on lengthy bilateral contracts that leave them hugely exposed to suppliers and customers. With its purchase of the New York Mercantile Exchange in 2008, exchange operator CME Group became the leading venue for energy trading and placed itself squarely at the intersection of still-evolving trends in the sector. Keep reading →
What is the single dumbest electrical component? It’s the load panel (the circuit breakers) in your home or office, which typically has a digital quotient of exactly zero. Even door locks are going digital more quickly.
An Israeli company wants to change that, and they’ve come a long way already. Computerized Electricity Systems (CES) stuffs the following functionality into its CES Smart Distribution Panel: Keep reading →
Jared Anderson
Conway Irwin
Peter Gardett
Untangling The New Regulation: AOL Energy Week In Review
By Peter GardettHas the deregulation of the energy industry gone into reverse?
Energy deregulation was a central theme of the 1990s, a trend that swept the developed world as ways to liberate markets were sought out in the wake of seemingly-successful deregulation efforts elsewhere in the economy in the preceding decade. No longer would customers pay out regulated, regular rates to monopoly corporations with lengthy planning timelines and no incentive to cut costs or employees. Creative destruction was the name of the game, and politicians and power regulators got roughly half-way through rewriting the rules of power markets before the implosion of Enron put the brakes on efforts at further deregulation, which have been halting and piecemeal. Keep reading →