Author name: Michael Giberson

Is Real-time Pricing Worth the Trouble for Residential Customers?

6 Comments / Electricity, Energy markets / By

Michael Giberson A study of consumers’ responses to real time pricing, by Hunt Allcott, examines 2003 and 2006 data from the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Energy Smart Pricing Plan.  Allcot observes: This is a particularly interesting time to be studying real time pricing. Most US households currently have electricity meters that simply record the total …

Is Real-time Pricing Worth the Trouble for Residential Customers? Read More »

National Research Council Says Benefits from Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles Decades Away

5 Comments / Electricity, Transportation / By

Michael Giberson The National Research Council has issued a study examining the costs and benefits of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and concluding that it will likely be decades before such vehicles yield benefits to overcome their higher initial costs.  From the press release: Costs of plug-in hybrid electric cars are high — largely due to …

National Research Council Says Benefits from Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles Decades Away Read More »

Electric Power Rate Reforms Needed for Smart Grid to Create Value

1 Comment / Electricity, Regulation / By

Michael Giberson In a white paper released yesterday, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) identified three requirements necessary for the smart grid to create value for residential customers: Pricing must provide incentives to manage energy use more efficiently and enable consumers to save money. Communication Standards must be open, flexible, secure, and limited in …

Electric Power Rate Reforms Needed for Smart Grid to Create Value Read More »

Texas Retail Electric Rates Remain Higher Than Neighboring States

2 Comments / Electricity, Energy markets, Regulation / By

Michael Giberson Over the weekend the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published a long story detailing views on outcomes in the restructured Texas retail power market.  The newspaper story might be read as a kind of rejoinder to the view Lynne expressed as she announced the availability of the book on the Texas power market that she …

Texas Retail Electric Rates Remain Higher Than Neighboring States Read More »

U.S Government Becoming Clean Energy Venture Capitalist

2 Comments / Energy markets, Politics / By

Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal summarizes the news that you already know: the U.S. Department of Energy has become one of the biggest financial forces in the clean energy innovations business. The DOE hopes to lend or give out more than $40 billion to businesses working on “clean technology,” everything from electric cars and …

U.S Government Becoming Clean Energy Venture Capitalist Read More »

Ercot Begins to Settle Accounts Based on Data Rather Than Guesses

Electricity, Energy markets, Regulation / By

Michael Giberson Okay, so my title above is a little over dramatic, but the essence of the title remains.  Previously, lacking high quality interval data on retail consumption, ERCOT has been allocating charges to retail energy suppliers based on load profiles – not exactly guesses, more like informed guesses.  As distribution utilities in the competitive …

Ercot Begins to Settle Accounts Based on Data Rather Than Guesses Read More »

Repugnance, Outrage, and Other Moral Excuses

3 Comments / Miscellany / By

Michael Giberson Bryan Caplan, in How Wise is Repugnance?,  questions Leon Kass’s argument that “repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom.” (From Kass’s essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance.”) Kass runs through a list of things that he thinks the reader will accept as obviously repugnant (incest, bestiality, mutilating corpses, cannibalism, and so on) and …

Repugnance, Outrage, and Other Moral Excuses Read More »

The Benefits of the Proposed Tres Amigas Interconnection

Electricity, Energy markets / By

Michael Giberson Both of the Tres Amigas filings at FERC (see background) provide summaries of the anticipated benefits of the proposed interconnection between the Eastern, Western, and ERCOT interconnections.  Each of the five kinds of benefits listed below seem plausible to me.  While estimating the size of the benefits would require a lot of hard …

The Benefits of the Proposed Tres Amigas Interconnection Read More »

Digging into the Resource Curse: Research into Oil Revenue and Brazilian Municipalities

2 Comments / Energy markets, Politics / By

Michael Giberson A paper by Francesco Caselli and Guy Michaels, “Do Oil Windfalls Improve Living Standards? Evidence from Brazil,” takes a closer look at the how the resource curse works its anti-magic. (Ungated version here.) The abstract: We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find …

Digging into the Resource Curse: Research into Oil Revenue and Brazilian Municipalities Read More »

Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive