Reliability

Big Data Dives Clarify California Power Markets

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Power markets have always been a complex proposition, perhaps especially so in the places where they could do the most good. How to price the creation and delivery of a commodity that can’t be stored, is technologically complex to ship and often dirty to create where it isn’t unreliable?

Transmission is the central component of the traditional power market. The lines and towers are the only thing that can make power flow from lower priced areas to higher priced areas, and as part of managing access the administrators of these markets have begun to charge for Congestion Revenue Rights. In California, those CRRs have become a major market, with banks, trading houses and power marketing firms all getting in on the action since trading began in 2009. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 3, 2013 at 1:15 PM

Natural Gas Pipeline Market Failure Looms

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One of the biggest ignored threats to the power sector – and to electricity delivery to homes and businesses across much of the country’s most populated regions – is from a lack of natural gas pipeline capacity. A former federal regulator is warning that this issue, arcane at first glance, could prompt market failure and a crisis of reliability for some generators.

The free market is a funny thing; it works only over time and often in socially unpopular ways. The energy market in the US has been regulated, de-regulated and re-regulated over its history, but all market participants are operating in the context of rules set up to balance policy priorities and operating realities. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 3, 2013 at 10:30 AM

U.S. Nuclear Energy: Where I’ve Been and Where It’s Going

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As a scientist with one eye squarely on the environment and the other on people, I’m proud that, for the last six years, I’ve helped to lead the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition and its diverse array of members to help the public make decisions about nuclear energy and America’s energy future based on facts.

As I step down as co-chair of CASEnergy Coalition following a busy, fulfilling six years, I feel fortunate that, along with my co-chair and friend Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, we’ve made a lot of progress Keep reading →

 /  Published March 7, 2013 at 1:00 PM

How Crowdsourcing Could Save the Department of Energy

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Are DOE’s most effective problem solvers outside the Department itself?

In the fall of 2011, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General issued a sobering report calling for a major restructuring of operations. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 1, 2013 at 10:30 AM

IBM on US Energy Cybersecurity: Keep Calm and Carry On

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For years predictions of the horror show that could happen if the nation’s electricity grid was compromised by hackers proliferated in inverse correlation to the number of attacks; the sector went about its peaceful way, adding security as it added increased interconnectivity and meeting standards that left service reliability levels intact.

That “quiet war” in cyberspace is over. The US energy sector is under attack, and there isn’t any indication the situation is going to improve. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 26, 2013 at 10:20 AM

Power Market Transparency: Money Out of ‘Negawatts’

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Americans are accustomed to being told that they are running behind other countries, that other places are doing a better job of educating their young or building high-speed railroads or ensuring access to healthcare. Energy efficiency would seem to be the last area in which the US, with its famously well-lit and climate-controlled lifestyle, would be leading.

But in fact, demand response markets that allow customers and power providers to reap the benefits of “negawatts” (essentially un-used power they would traditionally demand or need to supply) are highly developed in the US, if admittedly still imperfectly understood and applied. The market for demand response, which is the activity that creates “negawatts,” has grown from essentially nothing a decade ago to a $3 billion market today, Joule Assets CEO Mike Gordon told Breaking Energy on the sidelines of the AGRION Energy & Sustainability Summit in New York City this month. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 26, 2013 at 8:00 AM

Big Solar Looks To Grow With Precise Cloud Forecasts

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The forecast is looking better for getting more solar energy onto the grid and at lower cost, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research say.

A team at the federally funded research and development center in Boulder, Colo., is embarking on a three-year project aimed at giving solar power plant and grid operators three-day forecasts that break down expected sunlight and power production by 15-minute increments. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 25, 2013 at 8:30 AM

New Jersey Power Company Set to Spend Billions in Wake of Sandy

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How many billion of dollars does it take to secure the infrastructure of an energy company against the “known unknowns” of historic storms and other forms of interruption and just as importantly, who should pay?

The Public Service Enterprise Group company of New Jersey (PSEG) had an opportunity to answer that question in real time in the weeks after Hurricane Sandy, a storm that impacted facilities that had never been hit by storms in 50 years of operation and knocked out power to a remarkable 90% of the company’s customers. Since then, the firm knows that “business as usual is not enough,” PSEG CEO Ralph Izzo told the AGRION Energy & Sustainability Summit in a wide-ranging speech opening the second day of the conference in New York City this week. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 22, 2013 at 9:00 AM

Wake Up, America! China is Attacking

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The United States is reportedly under attack by the Chinese government. America’s business secrets, critical infrastructure and wealth are the targets. But many businesses are taking a lackadaisical approach to cybersecurity. Multiple industry studies have shown that the vast majority of companies don’t begin following cybersecurity best practices until after they’ve been hit. The latest and most telling example came Tuesday. According to a new report from information security company Mandiant, the Chinese military is linked to one of the most prolific hacking groups in the world. That group, known as the “Comment Crew,” has attacked Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500), EMC (EMC, Fortune 500) security division RSA, military contractor Lockheed Martin (LMT, Fortune 500), and hundreds of others. It reportedly holds the blueprints to America’s energy systems, and has funneled trade secrets out of some of the country’s largest corporations. The implications of China’s presence in Corporate America’s networks are vast, from matters of economic competitiveness to international diplomacy.

 /  Published February 20, 2013 at 1:40 PM

The Man With Money in His Voice: NY State’s Richard Kauffman

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Richard Kauffman had a rapt audience at the AGRION Energy and Sustainability Summit in New York City as he opened the event with a largely off-the-cuff speech. He is a man known in the industry for handing out (and making) serious sums of money in energy, and has just been handed one of the highest profile, but least understood, new positions in the New York state government. Keep reading →

 /  Published February 20, 2013 at 7:30 AM
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