Electricity

Newsweek Smart Grid Article

Lynne Kiesling Last week Newsweek had an article on smart grid investments and projects that provides a good overview, focusing on the newly-funded Department of Energy demonstration projects. Many of you will already know more about these than the details provide in the article, but it’s a good overview if you don’t.

On Integrating Wind Power to the Texas Grid

Michael Giberson Nik Rod at Life in Energy discusses the integration of wind power to the ERCOT-managed grid, drawing on a new paper by Ramteen Sioshansi and David Hurlbut titled,“Market Protocols in ERCOT and Their Effect on Wind Generation”: How do you integrate intermittent wind generating resources in a market with set protocols and rules that are perfectly …

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Same Old Advice Gets New Package

Michael Giberson My essay of advice to free-market windpower critics, originally published at Master Resource, has been re-published at AltEnergyStocks. (But the really interesting new stuff at AltEnergyStocks is the immediately prior post on how lead-carbon battery developments will challenge lithium-ion designs for uses in which lithium-ion’s low weight is not a critical factor.  So …

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Energy Geeks Rejoice! Ecobee to Offer Thermostat Control Via Iphone App

Michael Giberson Have you ever hopped into your car heading out of town, and thirty minutes down the road you wonder, “Did I remember to adjust the thermostat?” There will soon be an app for that, at least if you have Ecobee‘s thermostat and an iPhone. Tyler Hamilton reports: Toronto-based Ecobee Inc., which has developed a …

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Firstenergy Seeks Switch from Midwest Iso to Pjm

Michael Giberson Platt’s reports: FirstEnergy will switch its Ohio electric transmission assets from the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator to the PJM Interconnection with its other transmission assets, the Akron, Ohio-based company said Friday. “Aligning all of our transmission assets with PJM will provide customers with the benefits of a more fully developed retail choice …

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Wind Energy Code of Conduct for New York

Michael Giberson The office of the attorney general of the state of New York announced yesterday that a total of 16 … wait, make that 17 wind power companies have signed onto the state’s new “Wind Industry Ethics Code.” The news release indicates that the main point of the industry “ethics code” is to prohibit …

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Blog Recommendation: Structured Thinking

Lynne Kiesling I would like to bring the blog Structured Thinking to your attention. Structured Thinking captures the ideas of a group of folks at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who do a range of energy-related and building-related research. For example, one recent post highlights a topic of great interest to me: behavioral economics and “keeping …

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Wind Power: My Advice to Free Market Critics

Michael Giberson I have a longish guest post, “Windpower: Focusing the Criticism Away from NIMBYism and Aesthetics,” up at Master Resource, Rob Bradley’s free market energy blog.  In general, in the post I offer advice to free-market-oriented critics of wind power, urging them to focus on the distortionary policy problems and to stay away from …

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The Wind Industry Loves to Fret

Michael Giberson “Still, the wind-power industry loves to fret,” writes Keith Johnson at the WSJ‘s Environmental Capital blog, “Now, the worry is about a slowdown in manufacturing which could put thousands of ‘green jobs’ at risk—unless Congress offers even more support to the wind industry in the form of tougher renewable-energy standards.” Of course “fretting” …

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