March 2012 shattered US temperature records. What about the summer?
Electricity market operators are not generally fond of hot summers, when consumers turn up their air conditioners to stay cool, while straining the network, sometimes to the brink of disaster. This summer is no exception, especially in a few places where supplies are likely to be tight. Keep reading →
We’ll let you be the judge of which is which in today’s good, bad and ugly smart meter round up, which will fill you in on everything from the latest opt outs, roll outs and left outs – to sabotage and another conspiracy theory.
ROLL OUTS Keep reading →
When the power goes out, electric utility customers want it back, and fast. Now it’s possible for a “smart” or “self-healing” electronic grid to reduce customers’ hours without power to just a few minutes. But adopting this technology is more complicated than flipping a switch. Keep reading →
The tragic Deepwater Horizon accident and devastating uncontrolled crude oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico deeply affected the oil and gas industry. The disaster prompted oil and gas industry trade group – API – to comprehensively re-evaluate and strengthen its offshore safety standards.
Specifically, API has “established a multi-layer system, with many built-in redundancies to help prevent incidents, to intervene and stop a release that might occur, and to manage and clean up spills,” Group Director of Upstream and Industry Operations Erik Milito told reporters during a recent question and answer session ahead of the two-year anniversary of the accident on April 20. Keep reading →
A crane stands next to a wind turbine mast under construction in a wind park on October 6, 2010 near Stoessen, Germany. The German government recently set ambitious goals for renewable energy sources in a new energy policy plan that calls for heavy investment in wind, solar and biogas electricity production.
The Danish wind giant is dealing with fallout from a fire on one of its turbine models. A number of operating turbines were paused following the fire, and the company responded to media questions this week with the following statement: Keep reading →
That is how Germany’s view of nuclear power was summed up by Jochen Flasbarth, President of the country’s Federal Environment Agency, at the New York Times Energy for Tomorrow Conference in New York.
Flasbarth participated in a panel discussion about the prospects for energy independence. He briefly talked about Germany’s plans to phase out nuclear power by 2020 and said that the country’s leadership determined nuclear is not a sustainable energy source, but he did not elaborate. Keep reading →
“Choice,” perhaps better than any other word, describes the American marketplace for most consumer goods and services. From aisles-full of options in the grocery store, to automobile packages designed for almost every consumer preference, many Americans would say they do not lack for choices when it comes to most of their potential purchases.
There is one sector, however, in which choice has traditionally not been available – energy. Since the late 19th century, utility companies have been granted geographic monopolies to provide electricity and natural gas to consumers. For decades, the energy supplied to one’s home or business was pre-determined without any consumer input. Keep reading →
When talking about energy and power generation today, it’s hard to avoid the topic of smart grids and intelligent metering systems. But the subject can seem somewhat nebulous and perhaps idealistic without hard numbers that put things in perspective. That is exactly what the US Energy Information Administration does.
The EIA maintains granular smart meter data that includes the total number of installations, who has them and more. At the end of 2010, 663 utilities had over 20 million advanced metering infrastructure installations, which accounts for about 6% of the total current US population. The lion’s share of these installations are at the residential level. Keep reading →
The charging cord for the Tesla Model S electric car
There is a hidden barrier to electric vehicles (EV) adoption – our electric grid. EVs could significantly increase peak demand and thus impact grid reliability. AMI and demand response technologies are often promoted as the solution for this uptick in peak demand. But we also need to look at other, grid-based solutions to enable broader adoption of EVs. Here are a few reasons why: Keep reading →
Influencing the Networked Global Energy Future
By Peter GardettIn late April dozens of the world’s top energy leaders gathered by the side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul to continue a tradition of discussion that has been going on since the end of the First World War required coordinated approaches to rebuilding a damaged Europe. Keep reading →