Lynne Kiesling Reader Robert Schwartz sends a link to a Slashdot thread on alternate fuels. Lots of hydrogen, nuclear, solar discussion. Of the posts I read, though, when people compare the costs of each, no one seemed to correct for/account for the subsidies that different technologies get. For example, there’s lots of folks in there …
Michael Giberson Has Restructuring Improved Operating Efficiency at US Electricity Generating Plants?, a working paper by Kira Markiewicz, Nancy Rose, and Catherine Wolfram posted by the University of California Energy Institute, answers the title’s question in the affirmative: This research provides some of the first estimates of the impact of electricity generation sector restructuring in …
Benefits Of Restructuring The Electric Industry In The Us Read More »
Lynne Kiesling On Friday Vernon Smith and I had commentary on the importance of customer choice in electric power markets in the San Diego Union Tribune. Here’s a teaser: Some California utilities are working to turn the clock back to the “good ol’ days” of regulation and guaranteed profits. A bill currently before the Legislature …
Kiesling/smith Commentary In San Diego Union Tribune Read More »
Michael Giberson On July 21, 2004, the Iowa Supreme Court issued an opinion in the case of Windway v. Midland Power Cooperative, ordering Midland to allow net metering to the owner of a 65-kilowatt wind turbine. [See story at IREC website.] Under net metering, a retail energy consumer with a small generator is only billed …
Lynne Kiesling In the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of status quo bias in the context of achieving meaningful policy change in the electric power industry. If it’s natural for us to prefer the status quo even in the face of beneficial change, how can we overcome those …
Lynne Kiesling OK, I said we were about more than electricity here, but this is cool: Randall Parker’s post on thin-film superconductor technology that may, in time, make large-scale centeral fossil-fuel generation of electric power obsolete. I also think he’s right, that nuclear would still continue to be able to compete (although there’s a large …
Michael Giberson Does immediate access to bid data in electricity markets aid collusion or aid in the detection of collusion and other market abuses? FERC, in a recent order on the Midwest ISO?s energy market filing, said: ?We agree with Wisconsin Retail and the Midwest TDUs that transparency is an important feature of market design. …
Lynne Kiesling A question related to the public good nature of network reliability is whether the fact that something has public good characteristics necessarily implies that it should be provided to all at a uniform level. Again, not necessarily. Imposing a uniform reliability standard to deal with the public good features of networks does disservice …
The ideas that have captured my attention recently (such as government funding of culture) have a central theme: the extent to which something is a public good, and what those public good characteristics imply for public policy. If a good (or service) has public good characteristics, does that fact necessarily imply that its provision should …
Network Reliability As A Public Good, And What To Do About It Read More »
In the past couple of days I?ve done some things that have given me some insights into my current research questions ? I?ve purchased appliances for our house and I?ve gotten our car?s emissions tested. Both of these situations have implications for policy regarding what are typically viewed as negative externalities. The main question to …
Energy Star Rebates And Irrelevant Externalities Read More »
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