Michael Giberson At the time of the initial announcement that Lubbock Power & Light would acquire the distribution assets of competing electric utility Xcel within the city, leaving LP&L as a monopolist, I took note of several inconvenient statements about the benefits of competition included in official LP&L history. (See “The (soon to be revised) …
The Revised History of Electric Competition in Lubbock Read More »
Michael Giberson After over 90 years of operating in competition with a rival electric utility in town, late last year Lubbock Power & Light and Xcel announced a deal in which municipal electric utility LP&L would buy out Xcel’s distribution assets and customer accounts in the city for $87 million, leaving LP&L as a monopoly …
How Valuable Will a Monopoly Be to Lubbock Power & Light? Read More »
Michael Giberson I’m not necessarily opposed to government funding for research, but does General Electric really need taxpayer funds in order to do research on high-temperature electronics intended to support high tech oil and gas drilling? Isn’t this exactly the kind of applied product research that, together, patent protections and markets can manage just fine? …
Michael Giberson Are their barriers impeding integration of variable energy resources to the electric grid? FERC wants to know: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) seeks comment on the extent to which barriers may exist that impede the reliable and efficient integration of variable energy resources (VERs) into the electric grid, and whether reforms are …
Integrating Variable Energy Resources to the Electric Power Grid Read More »
Michael Giberson Reports from Haiti suggest that prices for many useful and necessary goods have jumped considerably since the earthquake. Candles, matches, ice, water, food items, bus trips from the capital, petrol, plastic sandals, charcoal, rice, sugar – the list of items now selling at dramatically higher prices seems endless. Last week I suggested that …
Michael Giberson In the wholesale power markets world, commercial energy storage concepts are commonly somewhat of an afterthought. None of the large regional wholesale power markets integrated into transmission operations put too much effort into thinking about energy storage as they developed their market rules. A part of the problem is that the transmission system …
Energy Storage on the Grid: Transmission Equipment or Market Participant? (Again) Read More »
Michael Giberson One bill,, submitted to the New York State Assembly last year (but, so far as I can tell, not passed into law; ADDED: See status note below.), proposes to grant consumers a private right of action when they become victims of price gouging in times of emergency. Currently only the state’s Attorney General …
Michael Giberson Many keystrokes this week have been devoted to praising or damning the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I’m inclined to agree with the praisers, but others are more competent to address the legal and political issues addressed by the court. I just want to pass along a useful …
The Founders Were Deeply Skeptical of Corporations Read More »
Michael Giberson A “price gouging” search brings up pre-holiday complaints about the online secondary markets for Zhu Zhu Pets (like via Amazon and eBay): There is a move on auction sites such as Amazon and eBay calling for buyers to boycott any vendor who is price gouging the public on the much wanted Zhu Zhu …
Pre-holiday Price Gouging: The View from Six Weeks Later Read More »
Michael Giberson “It’s very hard to move mountains on energy policy, and Pickens has not yet even moved a hill,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University in Houston. “The problem that Pickens faces is that in this country if you are from the oil industry, people are naturally suspicious of what …
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