Michael Giberson A story by Purva Patel in the Houston Chronicle does a reasonably good job explaining the upcoming shift from a zonal to a nodal market design for the ERCOT market in Texas. It is a complicated matter and hard to convey to non-specialist readers. (In fact, even some specialists appear confused about parts …
Nodal Pricing Coming to Texas Wholesale Power Market Read More »
Michael Giberson Tom Konrad explains, “When it Makes Sense to Worry About Jevons Paradox, and When it Doesn’t.” Konrad highlights the critical point – whether demand for the good in question is elastic or inelastic – and suggests that the demand for electric power is relatively inelastic and therefore the demand for lighting is inelastic, hence …
Michael Giberson From the IEEE Global History Network: With the opening of the Pearl Street station in lower Manhattan at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on 4 September 1882, Thomas Edison publicly presented a complete system of commercial electric lighting and power. The success of the Edison bulb created a demand for a source of power. …
The 128th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Electric Power Industry Read More »
Michael Giberson Are monopoly municipal electric utilities supposed to be treated like piggy banks by city councils? For over 90 years Lubbock Texas has had two electric utilities serving the town – one regional state-regulated investor-owned utility (Xcel) and a municipal utility (LP&L). Both ran wires throughout the city and most customers could switch between the …
The City Council Puts Lubbock’s New Municipal Electric Monopoly to Use Read More »
Michael Giberson The current issue of The Economist reports on research that concluded “making lighting more efficient could increase energy use, not decrease it.” SOLID-STATE lighting, the latest idea to brighten up the world while saving the planet, promises illumination for a fraction of the energy used by incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. A win all …
The Economist: Making Lighting More Efficient Could Increase Energy Use Read More »
Michael Giberson The Texas Tribune offers an up-to-date overview of the Tres Amigas project. Here is the intro: Texas has always operated its own energy grid, separate from the two other grids that span the rest of the nation. But a project quietly emerging in eastern New Mexico would curb that independence — and affect …
Michael Giberson From the “Things that make you go Hmmmm” file, note things take an interesting turn in paragraph 4: W2 Energy, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has become a research affiliate of the Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy (AzRISE). AzRISE (www.azrise.org) is a global institute at the University of Arizona in …
Michael Giberson It is harder to hand out subsidies than you think, or at least hard to do it well. The Arizona Republic explains some of the difficulties utilities in the state are having with their renewable energy subsidy programs. For example, when Salt River Project announced it was going to cut it’s subsidy for …
Michael Giberson Suppose you are a merchant transmission line operator with a DC power line linking point A to point B. Some potential customers prefer to buy transmission capability the day before the power flow, while others would like to buy monthly, annual, or even multi-year contracts. While some customers want 24-hour delivery, others seek …
Auctioning Power Transmission Capacity Contracts of Varying Duration Read More »
Michael Giberson Tres Amigas, as seen by their hometown newspaper The Santa Fe New Mexican, “Supersized power hub in southeastern N.M. to link 3 major U.S. grids“: Phil Harris is masterminding an electricity superhighway — a facility near Clovis that will connect the nation’s three main power grids for the first time. The Tres Amigas …
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