Search Results for: smart grid

Not the Only Car-of-the-future Looking for a Handout

Michael Giberson Jeffrey Ball at the WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog describes Xcel Energy’s first steps in bringing Vehicle-to-grid power into its SmartGridCity effort in Boulder, Colorado: So far, it’s pretty small potatoes, involving exactly one car and one plug. But boosters say it has the potential to revolutionize – and revitalize — our aging power …

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Electricity Markets and Price Signals: Customer Technology in Britain, and a Misleading Wsj Article About Texas

Lynne Kiesling Two recent news articles highlight the relevance of electricity price signals and intelligent end-use technology during a period of increasing fuel prices, and the juxtaposition of the two articles highlights consumers changing their behavior in the face of high energy prices. In short, the institutional change required to achieve thriving, healthy retail electricity …

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How Important Will Plug-in Hybrids Be?

Lynne Kiesling To answer my own question: dunno. But the technology has a lot of promise. The Wikipedia entry on plug-in hybrid vehicles” is a thorough and well-cited background on the technology and its potential. In particular, of course, I am interested in the vehicle’s intersection with the electric power network: PHEVs and fully electric …

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Sun-times Article On Residential Demand Response Program

Lynne Kiesling Today the Chicago Sun-Times is running a story by Mary Wisniewski about the Energy Smart Pricing Plan, a residential demand response program that has been running in northern Illinois for two years. One of our many long-cherished preconceptions of the demand for electric power services is that residential customers do not respond to …

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Residential Demand Response is Alive and Living in Chicago

On Friday I attended an important event in Chicago that shines an optimistic beacon into the stagnant state of electricity policy. The event was the announcement of the first year’s results of the Community Energy Cooperative’s residential demand response program. This program’s results are exciting, and should open our thoughts to a wider range of …

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Only Connect

The blackout last Thursday has produced some hyperbolic hysteria about the perils and vulnerability that come with being so interconnected. But decentralized interconnection is also a source of stability and growth, both physically and economically. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a physicist and author of Linked FINISH, had an oped in Saturday’s New York Times about the pros …

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