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 …
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 …
Firstenergy Seeks Switch from Midwest Iso to Pjm Read More »
Michael Giberson A study by the Government Accountability Office has concluded that gasoline refinery outages tend to have small effects on prices. While large scale weather events like Hurricane Katrina and Rita did result in large prices increases, such events are rare, the study said. In other findings: Typical unplanned refinery outages tended to increase …
Refinery Outages Generally Have Small Effects on Gasoline Prices, Gao Says Read More »
Michael Giberson At Freakonomics, a Q&A with Christopher Steiner, author of $20 a Gallon. Haven’t read the book, but my present question has only to deal with an issue raised in the Freakonomics Q&A: the energy economics of school buses. Freakonomics asks how higher fuel prices would affect the way children get to school. Steiner …
Do School Buses Use More Energy Than the Likely Alternatives? Read More »
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 …
Michael Giberson From the Yakima Herald-Republic, “Ebb and flow of wind power stress NW power grid,” a report of the challenges in keeping the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) transmission grid balanced when power output from wind farms varies quickly: In the space of one hour last month, electricity generated at wind farms in the eastern …
Balancing Swings in Power from Wind Farms on the Bonneville Power Administration Grid Read More »
Michael Giberson An article from the San Bernardino, CA, The Sun offers a glimpse at the retail gasoline world from the retailers point of view: checking up on the competition twice a day, worried about being a penny or two too high in price, the pluses and minuses of accepting credit cards, negotiating with his …
Retailing Gasoline: At Least Twice a Day Dan Checks Up on His Competition Read More »
Michael Giberson The gold in the oceans and the gold in algal biofuel have much in common. You can develop a production process in each case, but the capital and operating costs for producing each are far too high for them to be commercially viable. I don’t begrudge anyone trying in either case to improve …
The Gold in the Oceans and the Gold in Algae Biofuels Read More »
Michael Giberson Below are three charts showing data on ERCOT West zone power prices for the January-June 2009 period. The charts were derived from data provided through the ERCOT website, on their “Balancing Energy Services Market Clearing Prices for Energy Annual Report” page. These charts were prepared in the same way, including use of the …
Negative Power Prices in Ercot West: Charts for Jan-june 2009 Read More »
Michael Giberson ERCOT reached a new peak load record last week, beating the record set just a week before. Boone Pickens is backing off a little from earlier ambitions to build the world’s largest wind power facility near Pampa, Texas. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that low natural gas prices are limiting interest in …
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