distributed generation – Knowledge Problem

Does Bad Regulatory Policy Sow the Seeds of Better Regulatory Policy?

1 Comment / Electricity, Environmental policy, Regulation, Uncategorized / By Michael Giberson

Severin Borenstein asks whether growth of distributed energy is mostly an uneconomic response to regulatory dysfunction, and raises the question of whether uneconomic responses might lead to regulatory improvements. He doesn’t quite frame the issues quite like that, his post is somewhat exploratory in form, but I think this is the question he is aiming at. …

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“Grid Defection” and the Regulated Utility Business Model

6 Comments / Electricity, Energy markets, Regulation, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

The conversations about the “utility death spiral” to which I alluded in my recent post have included discussion of the potential for “grid defection”. Grid defection is an important phenomenon in any network industry — what if you use scarce resources to build a network that provides value for consumers, and then over time, with …

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The “Utility Death Spiral”: The Utility As a Regulatory Creation

7 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Environmental policy, Regulation, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Unless you follow the electricity industry you may not be aware of the past year’s discussion of the impending “utility death spiral”, ably summarized in this Clean Energy Group post: There have been several reports out recently predicting that solar + storage systems will soon reach cost parity with grid-purchased electricity, thus presenting the first …

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