Michael Giberson At Master Resource, Daren Bakst and Carlo Stagnaro take apart a report by the North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network (NC WARN) that concluded that solar power was now cheaper than nuclear power. The short version of the story is that NC WARN’s analysis treated federal and state subsidies as reducing the cost of …
Michael Giberson Under North Carolina’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard, poultry waste burned to boil water to generate steam to turn a turbine generating electricity will earn RECs which can be sold to electric utilities needing to meet the state’s new renewable energy standard. Also under the law, poultry waste burned to boil …
The Differences Between Renewable Energy and Renewable Power in North Carolina Read More »
Michael Giberson In the current issue of Regulation, Tim Brennan reviews Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story, edited by Andrew Kleit and our own Lynne Kiesling. After a lengthy introduction discussing how deregulation came to the electric power business (mostly it hasn’t, but parts of the industry have been reorganized), Brennan gets down to the book …
Review of Kiesling and Kleit (eds.) Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story Read More »
Michael Giberson We’ve discussed the complicated relationship between wind power and the net reductions in greenhouse gas and other emissions here previously. Industry viewpoints come to expected conclusions – it is no surprise that the Colorado oil and gas industry promotes the view that wind is less special than claimed, nor that the American Wind …
The Continuing Debate over Wind Power and Net Emissions Read More »
Michael Giberson Many critics of smart grid-related ideas for saving energy object that consumers won’t want to sit around watching energy prices, flipping light switches and delaying the dishwasher when prices spike now and again to save a few bucks. Of course the critics are right on this point. The best smart grid energy saving …
Michael Giberson Current and anticipated changes in the patterns of electric power production and consumption drive the demand for new transmission lines to help get lower-cost power from generators to consumers. The biggest changes in power production have come from growth in renewable power supplies, so the expansion of transmission is seen as critical to …
Is Texas Crez a Model for Getting Transmission Lines Built Elsewhere in the Country? Read More »
Michael Giberson I don’t understand the physics here – it’s some combination of quantum mechanics and carbon nanostructures – but according to this news release from the University of Arizona, it can turn waste heat into electric power. So far the interesting properties have been simulated in a computer model, but not demonstrated in a …
Michael Giberson Does the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) really want to go down this path? Do they really think that faking a consumer cartel will help make wholesale power markets work more efficiently? Consumers come to any market in pretty direct competition with each other. Suppliers are offering their goods and I would like …
Will Faking a Consumer Cartel Help Make Power Markets More Efficient? Read More »
Michael Giberson Cities have taxpayers and monopoly utility companies have ratepayers. When the city owns the utility, the taxpayers are – more or less – the same group of people as the ratepayers. In this case, does it matter which group pays how much for what? Should, for example, the municipal utility buy vehicles for …
Taxpayers, Ratepayers, City Government, Municipal Utilities Read More »
Michael Giberson Last week the Lubbock city council approved a plan to direct municipal utility Lubbock Power and Light to pay the cost of operating and maintaining the city’s street lights (see earlier post). This week the municipal utility fights back: “LP&L ready to fight city on street light money.” The Lubbock Power and Light …
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