A Triathlete’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoon
Lynne Kiesling The winning caption: “You’re in trouble when we get to the bicycles!”
Todd Zywicki: the Commerce Clause is in the Constitution for a Reason
Lynne Kiesling I am in violent agreement with my friend Todd Zywicki’s commentary in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal on the Obama administration’s actions in the Chrysler bankruptcy. In particular, By stepping over the bright line between the rule of law and the arbitrary behavior of men, President Obama may have created a thousand new failing …
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Illinois Smart Grid Initiative Final Report
Lynne Kiesling Last year I worked on the project team for the Illinois Smart Grid Initiative, in which we brought together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss the opportunities, benefits, and costs of different models of investing in smart grid infrastructure and technologies. We also discussed the important regulatory institutional changes that would be …
Whirlpool: Smart Grid Appliances by 2015
Lynne Kiesling Last week Whirlpool announced that by 2015 all of their appliances would have embedded digital intelligence to make them responsive, transactive smart grid devices. There have been a few articles on this point, most recently this Reuters/GreenBiz one. Of course the crucial work here will be in developing open interoperability standards: The home …
Some Smart Grid Consumer Value Propositions
Lynne Kiesling Katharine Hamilton, President of the GridWise Alliance, wrote a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal that summarizes some of the consumer-facing benefits of smart grid technology: I would ask consumers this question: Do you want to adjust your energy usage based on your monthly bill, then wait until the next …
Resilience, Sustainability, and Loosely-coupled Systems
Lynne Kiesling The NIST smart grid interoperability roadmap workshop I attended last week has gotten me thinking about the similarities between system architecture (as the computer systems folks call it) and institutional design (as we political economy social scientists call it). Of course there’s quite a bit of similarity, as the work of the GridWise …
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A Good NYT Smart Grid Article
Lynne Kiesling Here’s a very thoughtful and well-done smart grid article from the New York Times. It focuses on two different cases: the residential real-time pricing product available to ComEd customers in northern Illinois, and the Xcel Energy smart grid project in Boulder. I heartily encourage you to read the whole thing; it’s one of …
More on Carbon Offsets
Lynne Kiesling Dwyer Gunn’s post on carbon offsets at the Freakonomics blog provides a good overview of the issues involved in carbon offsets: The offset credits are a popular component of most cap-and-trade proposals because they have the potential to lessen the economic costs of the programs. The cost of upgrading to environmentally friendly practices …
Smart Grid Policy Heats Up
Lynne Kiesling Smart grid policy and activity continue to heat up … I will be attending the NIST-EPRI Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Interim Roadmap Workshop Tuesday and Wednesday in DC, and will be co-chair of a track of sessions on business and policy. The focus of the meeting is “high-level principles” for developing smart grid …
NYT Article on Shai Agassi
Lynne Kiesling Here’s an interesting New York Times article profiling Shai Agassi, the entrepreneur behind Better Place. Better Place is fascinating and worthy of our attention because it has the potential to be a complete game-changer in transportation by making battery replacement in electric vehicles as quick and easy as putting gasoline in your car. …