Michael Giberson From a NERC press release: The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council (FRCC) have reached an agreement regarding the role of the FRCC Reliability Coordinator in the February 26, 2008 power outage that left nearly one million homes and businesses in …
Nerc, Ferc, and Frcc Agree on 2008 Florida Blackout Read More »
Michael Giberson The Houston Chronicle has added another voice to its roster of energy bloggers: Pat Wood III. Wood is former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and before that chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (though around here they usually list those two items the other way. In order of importance, …
Michael Giberson From WTVM-9: Latrese Brown, a Cusseta [Georgia] resident, gathered a group of people who believe Sumter EMC is ripping them off. “Not only mine but my entire community light bills are outrageous high, they’re more than our mortgages, more than our rent, more than our car note,” complains Brown. … The citizens of …
Michael Giberson I spent the middle of last week in Austin at the University of Texas-Law conference on wind, solar and geothermal energy law, and as a side bonus got to hear some informal, Austin-based commentary on the Tres Amigas proposal to interconnect the Eastern, Western, and Texas electric grids. It will give you some …
Tres Amigas Wants to Take Cheap Electric Power Away from Hard-Working Texas Families Read More »
Michael Giberson I complained the other day about a modest little $13 million grant of U.S. taxpayer money to General Electric for some research into high temperature electronics. The electronics are intended for deep well drilling applications such as for oil and gas or geothermal resource development. The program is just one of many, many …
Marc Gunther on GE and DC, and How to Reduce the Influence of Special Interests Read More »
Michael Giberson At the time of the initial announcement that Lubbock Power & Light would acquire the distribution assets of competing electric utility Xcel within the city, leaving LP&L as a monopolist, I took note of several inconvenient statements about the benefits of competition included in official LP&L history. (See “The (soon to be revised) …
The Revised History of Electric Competition in Lubbock Read More »
Michael Giberson After over 90 years of operating in competition with a rival electric utility in town, late last year Lubbock Power & Light and Xcel announced a deal in which municipal electric utility LP&L would buy out Xcel’s distribution assets and customer accounts in the city for $87 million, leaving LP&L as a monopoly …
How Valuable Will a Monopoly Be to Lubbock Power & Light? Read More »
Michael Giberson In the wholesale power markets world, commercial energy storage concepts are commonly somewhat of an afterthought. None of the large regional wholesale power markets integrated into transmission operations put too much effort into thinking about energy storage as they developed their market rules. A part of the problem is that the transmission system …
Energy Storage on the Grid: Transmission Equipment or Market Participant? (Again) Read More »
Michael Giberson One bill,, submitted to the New York State Assembly last year (but, so far as I can tell, not passed into law; ADDED: See status note below.), proposes to grant consumers a private right of action when they become victims of price gouging in times of emergency. Currently only the state’s Attorney General …
Michael Giberson What does “price gouging” mean? Commonly it is taken to refer to merchants raising prices substantially on necessities during emergencies. Each of the three elements – substantial price increase, necessary items, emergency periods – is part of a proto-typical case of price gouging. However, the term is frequently also used in cases lacking …
Stretching the Meaning of “Price Gouging” in Venezuela and Alaska Read More »
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