Electricity – Page 11 – Knowledge Problem

Innovations in Solar Inverter Technologies, and Their Economic Impact

Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Following up on Mike’s solar policy post from last week … one of the sub-areas in which development is occurring that I consider thoughtful, and unheralded, is in inverter technologies. When an array of photovoltaic panels generates electricity, it generates a direct current, but for use in conjunction with our alternating current distribution …

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Want Better Electricity Information? Do It Yourself!

3 Comments / Economics, Electricity / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Want better information about your electricity consumption, even if your premise does not have a utility “smart meter”? Do it yourself! Here are some examples, using in-home power meters and the home’s broadband connection to collect the electricity consumption data at WattzOn, an online energy tracking and monitoring tool. The idea is straightforward; …

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More Smart Grid Q and A at Greentech Media

Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling … But wait, there’s more! Greentech Media’s Green Tech Grid channel lists all of their smart grid Q&A interviews (from Jesse Berst and Michael Butler), including the two that I mentioned in my post earlier today. There are also links to other resources, worthy of your perusal.

Smart Grid Q and A at Greentech Media

Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Greentech Media has a couple of really good smart grid Q&A articles, one with Peter Fox-Penner and Ahmad Faruqui, and one with Fred Butler. Fox-Penner and Faruqui are two leading economists (with the Brattle Group) in analyzing consumer behavior and price responsiveness in electricity, and Butler is on the New Jersey Public Service …

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My Smart Grid Article in Reason

Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling My article on smart grid from the June print edition of Reason is now available online. Here’s the conclusion for a bit of a teaser: The obsolete electro-mechanical electric power network, built by and for a monopoly industry, cannot support the kind of growth experienced during the last 20 years in so many …

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2009 Energy Efficiency Indicator Survey

Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Johnson Controls and the International Facilities Management Association have released their third annual Energy Efficiency Indicator survey. As summarized in this GreenBiz article, More than 70 percent of respondents are paying more attention to energy efficiency now than they were in 2008. Eighty-five percent of executives believe significant legislation mandating energy efficiency and/or …

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Illinois Smart Grid Initiative Final Report

1 Comment / Economics, Electricity / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Last year I worked on the project team for the Illinois Smart Grid Initiative, in which we brought together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss the opportunities, benefits, and costs of different models of investing in smart grid infrastructure and technologies. We also discussed the important regulatory institutional changes that would be …

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Whirlpool: Smart Grid Appliances by 2015

2 Comments / Economics, Electricity / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Last week Whirlpool announced that by 2015 all of their appliances would have embedded digital intelligence to make them responsive, transactive smart grid devices. There have been a few articles on this point, most recently this Reuters/GreenBiz one. Of course the crucial work here will be in developing open interoperability standards: The home …

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Some Smart Grid Consumer Value Propositions

8 Comments / Economics, Electricity / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Katharine Hamilton, President of the GridWise Alliance, wrote a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal that summarizes some of the consumer-facing benefits of smart grid technology: I would ask consumers this question: Do you want to adjust your energy usage based on your monthly bill, then wait until the next …

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Resilience, Sustainability, and Loosely-coupled Systems

12 Comments / Economics, Electricity / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling The NIST smart grid interoperability roadmap workshop I attended last week has gotten me thinking about the similarities between system architecture (as the computer systems folks call it) and institutional design (as we political economy social scientists call it). Of course there’s quite a bit of similarity, as the work of the GridWise …

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