Distribution

Utility Commissioners Blast Transmission Plan

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Department of Energy plans to give federal regulators more authority over the siting of electricity transmission lines would delay development, provoke lawsuits, and damage federal-state relations, the utility commissioners’ trade group said.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners blasted the proposal to hand more power to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying it ignores court rulings and the intent of Congress, and would give the industry, rather than the government, control over the approval process. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 9, 2011 at 9:30 AM

MAGICC Grid

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Imagine that significant amounts of extra power could be stored for later use in your home. Now imagine that you can store it in a battery in your very own electric vehicle.

This PJM video highlights the transmission grid operator’s newest MAGICC car initiative, the Mid-Atlantic Grid Interactive Car Consortium. It lays out a a vision for a system that stores energy and then pulls it from batteries when demand fluctuates and potentially spikes. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 2, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Easing ‘A Necessary Evil’

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Consolidation and scale are the buzzwords in the solar component manufacturing world today as companies fight the impact of falling costs. But in the assembly and installation parts of the supply chain, the US industry is showing signs of fragmentation.

As traditional contractors retrain to green standards and chase increased demand for small-scale and domestic solar installations, many are taking market share from larger installers even as the total number of installations climbs. A new company freshly arrived from the world’s largest solar market, Germany, has landed on US shores to bring clarity to what it says is an American solar industry teetering on the brink of market maturation. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 29, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Millions Without Power Following Irene

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Utilities battled to restore power to millions of customers in the US northeast early Sunday after high winds and flooding from Hurricane Irene caused widespread outages.

By about 9 a.m. Sunday, four utilities covering parts of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington DC reported 1.48 million customers were without power after the storm toppled trees, knocking out local power lines. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 28, 2011 at 8:00 PM

Bracing For Widespread Power Outages From Irene

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Electric utilities and nuclear power plants in the mid-Atlantic area braced for widespread power outages from Hurricane Irene which some warned could cause more power disruption than any previous storm.

“This could be the worst storm we have ever seen,” said Karen Muldoon Geus, a spokeswoman for PECO, which supplies power to 1.6 million residential and commercial power customers in five counties in and around Philadelphia where the storm is expected to hit late Saturday and into Sunday. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 26, 2011 at 1:40 PM

Hurricane Irene could mean power outages, but for how many?

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Hurricane Irene could mean power outages, but for how many? http://huff.to/nth6rj HuffingtonPost

 /  Published August 26, 2011 at 10:40 AM

Smart grid is much more than metering and billing says head of IDC Energy Insights

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Smart grid is much more than just metering and billing says head of IDC Energy Insights at #APEC AMI workshop in Taipei. #greengrowth @followAPEC

 /  Published August 25, 2011 at 11:20 AM

FERC Order 1000 Draws More Complaints

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Opponents of the latest federal rule on transmission planning have re-emerged to lodge complaints as the regulation awaits implementation.

A group representing seven utilities, the Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy filed a request for a rehearing of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 1000 on Tuesday, calling the regulation “inconsistent with its stated objectives.” Though it has long been policy for all the utilities of a geographic region to pay together for new transmission lines, new renewable energy projects that require extensive new infrastructure are straining the model. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 24, 2011 at 6:00 AM

PJM: Grid stable, no load lost.

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Grid stable, no load lost. Outages local, not grid-related. 2700 MW gen lost in Va. PJM assessing situation with members #earthquake pjminterconnect

 /  Published August 23, 2011 at 3:40 PM

Seeing The Smart Grid Future Today

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Those who want to see what the US could look like in a future where smart grid is widely deployed should start with nearby neighbor Ontario, says technology and communications firm Trilliant.

Facing widespread retirements of power plants that would limit electric supply availability, the Canadian province, home to several of the country’s largest cities, abandoned the opt-in model popular among US utilities and required the installation of smart meters to facilitate time-of-use electricity pricing. Prices now rise and fall with demand at the domestic level, and smart meters, more than a million of them deployed by Trilliant customer Hydro One to date, allow customers to see those prices and react to conserve energy. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 22, 2011 at 7:45 AM
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