Lynne Kiesling In late July I spoke at Cato University, which was great; I met so many interesting and thoughtful people, and learned a lot from my fellow participants and speakers. I’m also happy that Cato has made the presentation notes and recordings of the presentations available on their website, so you can see and …
Michael Giberson The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) have issued their report on the events surrounding electric power and natural gas supply interruptions around the Southwest United States in early February, 2001. The culprit? According to the press release: “the task force found a majority of the …
Michael Giberson Much in the news in Texas these past few weeks have been new peak power records and several grid emergency conditions which saw the ERCOT power system narrowly avoid rolling blackout a time or two. Tom Fowler of the Houston Chronicle‘s Fuel Fix blog has been tracking the story closely, see selected links …
Power Consumption Reaches New Peaks in Texas, Ercot Narrowly Avoids Rolling Blackouts Read More »
Michael Giberson File it under “Ya think???” A post at Freakonomics by Steve Sexton concludes that California’s solar power subsidies may not be making the best use of the technology. Sexton points out, for example, the 1,923 residential rooftop systems installed in cloudy San Francisco rather than sunnier California locations: If San Francisco’s residential solar …
Michael Giberson Will electric power consumers facing smart-grid enabled real time prices have the potential to accidentally destabilize the power grid and cause a blackout? A paper presented at a recent IEEE conference says it is a possibility. The surprising culprit? Too much price elasticity in the market demand function. It is a surprising culprit …
Worried About Too Much Demand Elasticity in Electric Power Markets Read More »
Michael Giberson Earlier in the week I discovered this Household Hacker video “Flower Pot Fridge” courtesy of a Energy Circle blog post with the appealing title, “How to cool your beer without electricity!” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSZH0K-Qhuw&rel=0] Simple! All you need is a pair of flower pots (one slightly smaller than the other), some sand, a damp towel, …
Evaporative Cooling: Low Tech Method Good for Facebook’s High Tech Facility Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Last week’s heat wave in the US was record-setting. Historically, the combination of a persistent heat wave with static, regulated retail markets and fixed prices has resulted in brownouts or blackouts in peak hours (and, at least from my personal experience with ComEd, exploding transformers in substations). However, as reported by Martin LaMonica …
Lynne Kiesling A couple of days ago I outlined some remarks I gave at a regulation conference organized by the Istituto Bruno Leoni, and I asked what some of the risks are associated with electricity regulation. In the comments on that post, Ed Reid and David Zetland touched on what I think are two important …
Michael Giberson The Telegraph has reported “six Scottish wind farms were asked to stop producing electricity on a particularly windy night last month as the National Grid was overloaded.” The operators were paid a total of £900,000 to take the night off, likely earning more from not operating than they would have earned from selling power that …
Michael Giberson State and federal policy provides substantial subsidies to renewable power producers, but just because the subsidies go to renewable power producers in the first instance doesn’t mean they receive the full net subsidy. Figuring out the exact distribution of the subsidy requires extensive additional analysis. For example, local governments are exercising their authority …
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