Reliability

Candlestick Park: An Iron Grid For The Gridiron?

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With the exception of a few teams (Red Sox, Phillies and Cubs come to mind) most baseball fans are fairly mild mannered. In my house, we spend many summer nights falling asleep to the drone of the announcers’ voices as the seventh, eighth, ninth innings come and go. Football fans, on the other hand, seem to be more physically passionate. Maybe it’s the roughness of the sport. Or perhaps it’s the speed and action. Or the inherent excitement in each play. All I know is, if the lights were to go out for a few seconds in a baseball game, most fans would simply wave up the row for the beer guy. The millions of 49ers and Steelers fans in San Francisco and around their TV sets when two outages occurred during Monday night football reacted a little differently.

PG&E doesn’t have any more eyes left to blacken by consumers given their track record on smart grid implementation; the fact that they were unable to give a definitive reason for the outage did not help their cause. Whoever is to blame, one thing is certain. If the PG&E system and large facilities like sports complexes had energy storage technologies in place, the back-up power would come on in the blink of an eye and football fans would be none the wiser. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 22, 2011 at 3:25 PM

PJM pleased EPA #MATS rule docs include key elements of our proposal to preserve reliability bit.ly/vhB4uP @EPAgov

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PJM pleased EPA #MATS rule docs include key elements of our proposal to preserve reliability bit.ly/vhB4uP @EPAgov pjminterconnect

 /  Published December 22, 2011 at 9:15 AM

Power Prices Could Soar On Four Trillion Dollar ‘Perfect Storm’

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Utility customers face a “perfect storm” of sharply higher bills for electricity and natural gas because trillions of dollars in capital expenditure will be needed to upgrade aging US infrastructure and comply with environmental rules, according to the new head of America’s utility regulators’ association.

David Wright, incoming president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, predicted ratepayers will bear the brunt of huge expenditure needs for such improvements as installing smart grid technology, controlling power station emissions, and replacing old pipelines over coming decades. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 22, 2011 at 8:00 AM

EPA Utility MACT Rule Released: Coal Plants Set For Closure As Blackout Risks Cited

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Santa arrived a few days early for environmentalists, but the coal industry is getting Scrooge.

The Environmental Protection Agency released its Utility MACT rule on Wednesday, issuing a controversial order to slash mercury and other hazardous emissions from coal-fired power plants. By 2016, all plants must emit as little mercury as the best 12% do today, lowering national emissions 90%. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 21, 2011 at 4:00 PM

ConEd: Access The Funds For Energy Efficiency Projects

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Ultimately, you want an energy efficiency plan for your business – understanding it makes good business sense to lower your energy consumption, to save money, improve your bottom line and protect the environment in the process. You followed the preliminary steps of benchmarking to see how your building compares with similar buildings in your area. You’ve also had an energy audit to get a handle on what upgrades your building needs.

After looking at the laundry list of inefficient equipment and building systems that need improvements and the associated costs, you start to conceptualize the various ways to shuffle the budget to find capital for these improvements and make it work! Keep reading →

 /  Published December 20, 2011 at 6:00 AM

PJM Capacity Market Faces Uprising

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The theory of capacity markets is simple: in a competitive market, electricity prices for future supply will rise as shortages loom, drawing in competitors to profit by building new generating capacity.

In practice, it may not be working out that way, and simmering discontent over how much consumers are paying for future reliability, and what they’re getting for it, may become open, and bipartisan, rebellion in 2012. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 19, 2011 at 11:00 AM

Tax Credit For Energy Storage Proposed In Senate

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Innovations in electricity storage are needed if the US is to take advantage of clean energy resources, and two Senators have proposed an investment tax credit to accelerate storage solutions.

Senators Jeff Bingaman (Democrat for New Mexico) and Ron Wyden (Democrat for Oregon), the two ranking Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told an Energy Storage Association forum they are sponsoring a bill, S.1845, with Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, for a storage investment tax credit (ITC). It would be similar to credits now available for solar installations. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 14, 2011 at 11:30 AM

Utility Uncertainty ‘Unprecedented’ Industry Leaders Warn

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If the smart grid gets stalled in North America, it may be partly because utility executives are simply too busy with other issues.

Electric power faces unprecedented uncertainty, warned industry leaders during the EUCG Fall Workshop in Indianapolis. EUCG, a global association of utility professionals, meets semiannually to discuss issues and share best practices. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 13, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Energy Politics Supercycle Falters: AOL Energy Comment

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Markets run in cycles; we are all at the mercy of ups and downs in the macro and micro. Commodities markets, including those for energy, are often held to the dictates of “supercycles.” Infrastructure for commodities is so expensive, development timelines are so lengthy and the underlying shifts in demand and supply occur over such long phases that energy prices and resulting investments rise and fall over decades, not months.

The modern energy economy was born in one great supercycle around the middle of the twentieth century, and we are still its heirs. In the wake of a privately-sponsored boom in energy technology development and deployment in the 1920s, the US government responded to the inequities of the Great Depression of the 1930s by investing in huge electrification projects, choosing technologies, firms and energy types by fiat as it went. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 9, 2011 at 2:15 PM

New Twist: BPA Pays Customers To Consume More At Times Of Plenty

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Get used to the tail wagging the dog.

Until a few years ago, renewable energy resources were like a small tail on a big dog–utility owned and operated fossil-fueled generation. With their increased penetration in many parts of the world, the tail has grown big relative to the dog. In a few cases, the tail is now wagging the dog, rather than the other way around. The trend can only grow over time with important implications for both the dog and the tail. It is already happening in certain places and during certain times. With passage of time, it will become more commonplace, and troublesome. Keep reading →

 /  Published December 9, 2011 at 6:00 AM
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