Search Results for: tres amigas

Market Designs for Tres Amigas: How About Trilateral Market Coupling?

Michael Giberson More thoughts on economic issues related to the Tres Amigas project, an ambitious proposal to connect the Western, Eastern, and Texas electric grids via a three-way high tech transmission link located in eastern New Mexico. (Earlier: Tres Amigas intro and Economics for …). Europeans have had several years of experience connecting separate national …

Market Designs for Tres Amigas: How About Trilateral Market Coupling? Read More »

Economics for Tres Amigas

Michael Giberson Tres Amigas is a proposed project to link the Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection (ERCOT) by means of a high-tech three-way superconducting AC-DC-AC connection. You might wonder what economics has to say about such an unprecedented and innovative proposal. Consider this summary from Ralph Turvey, “Interconnector Economics,” Energy Policy, 34 …

Economics for Tres Amigas Read More »

Tres Amigas Project Proposes to Connect Eastern, Western, and Texas Power Grids

Michael Giberson A high-profile, high-technology power project is making waves well beyond the small town of Clovis, New Mexico, where it has secured land for development. I’ve been telling my students and anyone else I can induce to listen to me for a few minutes (i.e., mostly just my students) that my new hometown of …

Tres Amigas Project Proposes to Connect Eastern, Western, and Texas Power Grids Read More »

Commercial, Merchant Compressed-air Energy Storage Plant Under Development?

Michael Giberson Wind power RFP processes* are common enough these days, typically driven by renewable energy mandates placed on utilities. A recent wind power RFP announcement out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is different. A new company, Chamisa Energy, has initiated an RFP seeking wind power to pair up with a planned compressed-air energy storage …

Commercial, Merchant Compressed-air Energy Storage Plant Under Development? Read More »

Cold Snap Brings Rolling Power Outages to Texas; is Ercot Policy of Isolation at Fault?

Michael Giberson [Note: This item was originally posted at MasterResource as: “Texas Power Outages: A Preliminary Analysis (Cold snap brings failure–isolated ERCOT an issue)“] Wednesday morning, ERCOT, the power grid operator for much of Texas, called upon local distribution companies to cut power to blocks of consumers on a rotating basis. The rolling outages were a …

Cold Snap Brings Rolling Power Outages to Texas; is Ercot Policy of Isolation at Fault? Read More »

The Right Market Design for Trade Between Power Markets

Michael Giberson Windpower Monthly has a great article describing changes in the market for transmission capacity between power systems in Europe and the benefits of the changes.  Here is a summary by way of selected quotes, but the full story is worth reading: Most of the electricity cables connecting Europe were built when electricity systems …

The Right Market Design for Trade Between Power Markets Read More »

Incentives for Efficient Use of Storage in Electric Power Systems

Michael Giberson In the most recent Energy Journal, Ramteem Sioshonsi has an article examining the welfare effects of the incentives to use energy storage in electric power systems. (“Welfare Impacts of Electricity Storage and the Implications of Ownership Structure,” See volume 31:2 here.) He considers the incentives faced by consumers, generators, and merchant energy storage …

Incentives for Efficient Use of Storage in Electric Power Systems Read More »

Energy Storage on the Grid: Transmission Equipment or Market Participant? (Again)

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 »

External Costs of Energy Production, Auditing the Energy Star Program, and More

Michael Giberson NewsWatch:Energy puts together a pretty good list of energy links, today noting the National Research Council’s new “Hidden costs of energy: Unpriced consequences of energy production and use.” (Surprise: coal looks bad. But note that much of the harm arises from a small number of coal-fueled generators.  The rest of the coal-burners are …

External Costs of Energy Production, Auditing the Energy Star Program, and More Read More »