Lynne Kiesling The Department of Energy has published a new, very user-friendly introduction to smart grid technologies, benefits, and policies (pdf). I have some quibbles with some of the details, but if you are a newcomer to smart grid (say, for example, if you have heard that this is a primary objective of the incoming …
Lynne Kiesling [Note: FTW=for the win, for those of you who don’t waste your time in the jargon of the tubez of the Interwebz.-ed.] I am glad to hear that the big buzz from the Consumer Electronics Show 2009 is induction chargers for electronic devices. Wikipedia’s got a nice explanation of inductive charging if you …
Lynne Kiesling Here’s an interesting list of “energy myths” from Chris Goodall at The Guardian. What I find useful about his discussion is not the “myth debunking” per se, but rather his comments on why he considers them myths. The “wind is unreliable” myth, for example: Actually, during some periods earlier this year the wind …
Lynne Kiesling This Wired article summarizes and links to a poster for the American Geophysical Union meetings (pdf) from Elaine Hart, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. Her power flow simulation suggests that the existing transmission network in California can accommodate up to 70% of renewables in the portfolio on a …
New Analysis: California’s Grid Can Accommodate More Renewables Read More »
Lynne Kiesling On Monday the Chicago Tribune published an editorial about electricity policy in Illinois (registration required). We’ve got a lot of electricity policy issues on the table right now. Nine years ago, the political bargain struck to allow wholesale market competition in electric power was a ten-year retail rate freeze, at a discounted rate …
Chicago Tribune: Enable Free Markets in Electricity in Illinois Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Check out this very cool idea for reinventing capacitors with nanotubes to provide energy storage for portable devices. The capacitor, a 300-year-old technology for modulating current flow by storing small amounts of energy, stores energy via electrodes that separate a charge and thus maintain potential. But it can only store energy in proportion …
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released the draft Report to Congress on Competition in the Wholesale and Retail Markets for Electric Energy on behalf of the Electric Energy Market Competition Task Force. This report, required by Section 1815 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, provides an overview and summarizes the progress …
Draft Report to Congress on Wholesale and Retail Competition in Electricity Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I saw an interesting article over the weekend about M&A activity in electricity. Currently there are two large electricity mergers that are receiving both federal and state regulatory review (Exelon/PSEG and Constellation/FPL), and the reviews are causing a lot of contentious political machinations because they are occurring at the same time as fuel …
Regulatory Hurdles to Electricity Mergers Persist Read More »
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