Reliability

Benchmarking: How Does Your Building Stack Up?

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Energy benchmarking can help you better understand your commercial property’s energy use and monitor performance over time. It allows for comparisons among similar building types and helps identify which ones could operate more efficiently.

The Environmental Protection Agency and its ENERGY STAR® Program offers a free online tool called Portfolio Manager that allows users to track and assess building energy consumption for a single building or an entire portfolio. Portfolio Manager can help comply with local energy laws, set investment priorities, identify under-performing buildings, verify efficiency improvements and receive EPA recognition for superior energy performance. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 6, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Survey Surprises: Smart Grid Impediments, Electric Vehicle Roadblocks and More

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The greatest roadblock to developing smart grids in the US is not high up-front investment, good news when 65 million electric vehicles could be on the road by 2025, according to the results of a recent annual electric utility industry survey. Infrastructure firm Black & Veatch queried over 500 qualified industry participants about some of the most prescient issues of the day and the results may surprise you.

The top issues the industry is concerned about in 2012 are aging infrastructure, reliability and the environment. Aging infrastructure steadily crept to the top of the list over the past three years – in the 2009/2010 survey the issue ranked sixth in a list of the top ten. The importance of security has also gained importance according to the survey participants. Keep reading →

 /  Published June 4, 2012 at 10:00 AM

As Summer Nears, New AC Technology Promises Energy Savings

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One of the US electricity sector’s founding pillars was the growth of air-conditioning demand across the country in the years after the Second World War. While electrification had grown to near-universal access in the preceding decades on industrial demand and huge Depression-era government programs, the boom in power plant construction was extended and broadened by the prospect of cooling millions of homes, office buildings and shopping centers and an extended demographic shift in people moving to the sunnier states of the South was boosted.

But air conditioning isn’t without cost, especially during temperatures spikes in the summer when blackout risks loom and prices for power skyrocket in a vise of massive demand and limited total power production. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 31, 2012 at 10:20 AM

Could More Midwest Wind Really Save Ratepayers Billions?

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Additional wind power in the US Midwest could cut wholesale electricity prices by more than 25%, saving a typical household as much as $200 a year, proponents of new renewable energy capacity in the region said.

The analysis for the advocacy group Americans for a Clean Energy Grid found that if 20 GW was added to the existing 10 GW of wind capacity in the MISO region, consumers’ power costs would decline by $3 billion to $6.9 billion a year after the costs of new transmission is factored in. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 24, 2012 at 8:00 AM

How much of an impact do you think Distributed Generation will have in the next 10 years…20 years ?

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 /  Published May 22, 2012 at 12:40 PM

Venture Backing for Distributed Generation Firm Marks a Shift

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Generating power for your residence is no longer for the paranoid or the peculiar; more than 2,000 of California’s heavy domestic energy users have signed up with Gen110 to meet most of their own power needs, and investors are sinking more money into the business as its burgeoning potential becomes apparent.

Gen110 CEO and co-founder Jason Brown isn’t your usual “energy guy.” He is a relatively recent graduate of business school with a background in sales, not power engineering, and his membership as part of Silicon Valley’s technorati has been confirmed this week with the announcement of funding by the tech startup’s venture capitalist of choice: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 18, 2012 at 8:00 AM

Utility of the Future: The Upside of Disruption

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It is easy to enumerate the challenges facing the utility sector over the coming decade, but participants in DNV KEMA’s fifth “Utility of the Future” Summit in Washington, DC today were optimistic about the opportunities to build on what many pointed out was a relationship of deep trust with consumers and regulators.

Southern Company Services CEO Susan Story grabbed the conference’s attention with an easy command of extensive facts about the largest vertically integrated US utility’s efforts to adjust to changing operating and technology environments. She balanced the deep dives with illustrative examples and a strategic view of her industry’s changing place in the world. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 16, 2012 at 8:00 AM

The Bill To (Mostly) Avoid Blackouts? $75 Billion Annually

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Anyone who thought economics was the dismal science should try civil engineering.

Despite more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in investment from 2001 to 2010 the US is still facing an enormous shortfall in electricity infrastructure. That decade was marked by higher spending on reliability in the years that followed the high-profile California blackouts and were interrupted by an equally notable New York City blackout. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 9, 2012 at 11:45 AM

Power Companies Hope for El Nino Break from Record Summer Heat

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Is the US headed for a cooler summer and a lower demand for energy-intensive air conditioning following the surging temperatures of recent years?

Two forecasters think so, based on El Nino, or the cyclical warming of Pacific Ocean waters, which is expected to bring lower temperatures than were experienced in recent summers to many areas of the U.S. this year. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 9, 2012 at 8:00 AM

Big Data Doesn’t Sleep: Demand Response Trends

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Power companies are training their customers to see electricity supply in a new way, with two-way flows of information and energy that can increase reliability and prevent the need for costly transmission building.

“Demand response is creating business intelligence” in which companies can understand their exposure to time of use as well as overall volume of use when it comes to electricity, Constellation Energy Senior Vice President for Demand Response Gary Fromer told Breaking Energy recently. Keep reading →

 /  Published May 7, 2012 at 11:30 AM
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