Grrrrr.
Electricity
California Senate Bill Would Re-regulate Electricity
And send California back in time, just as the happy modern primitives who abhor dynamic change want. California Senate Bill 888, about which I posted back in April. This bill has been approved by a Senate panel. The 1996 deregulation law [AB1890] was intended to foster competition to drive down electricity prices. Instead, wholesale electricity …
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Power Plant Hazards On Lake Michigan In The Spring
This is the time of year when we who live on Lake Michigan get to enjoy the annual alewife spawn. An alewife is a small fish that seeks out warm lake water to spawn in late April, and about every 7 years they “overspawn” and die off in a huge, dramatic, and very smelly way …
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Power Security
Business Week recently ran an article on power grid cybersecurity. Security is one reason why regulation based on natural monopoly theory, which contends that duplication of infrastructure is unnecessarily wasteful, overlooks the benefits of redundant systems. Redundancy need not mean duplicate grid infrastructures, but can involve substituting other means of getting power, such as distributed …
Will California Create Value Through Customer Choice? New York is a Role Model
The past week has seen a few interesting developments related to electricity deregulation, and I found the juxtaposition of them interesting. They further reinforce the reasons for customer choice and retail deregulation in electricity. First, the denouement of the California electricity crisis continues on, with the California legislature facing two opposing pieces of legislation concerning …
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Commentary On Ferc Staff Report
On March 26 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued its staff report on price manipulation in western wholesale markets. The report, and the likely FERC actions to arise from it, accomplishes some goals that will reduce regulatory uncertainty and improve the investment prospects in this industry, in the rest of the country if not in …
Hydrogen-powered Buildings?
Today’s fourth part of RPPI’s five-part series on hydrogen looks at using hydrogen fuel cells and hybrid engines to power buildings. There’s a lot of potential benefits there, and not as many problems as with vehicles. Tomorrow: can the government (or anyone else, for that matter) pick technology winners?
FERC Ruling On California Refunds
Here’s Chairman Pat Wood’s statement today on the matter, and a findings-at-a-glance summary. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this once I’ve read the staff report.
Giving Electricity Regulation A Jolt
Ken Silverstein has written a wonderful article today on ways to change the regulatory approach to retail electricity markets, quoting both me and Ken Malloy from the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets extensively. Both Ken and I make the market-based case for utilities to be free to offer a variety of services to …