renewables

Should Regulated Utilities Participate in the Residential Solar Market?

I recently argued that the regulated utility is not likely to enter a “death spiral”, but that the regulated utility business model is indeed under pressure, and the conversation about the future of that business model is a valuable one. One area of pressure on the regulated utility business model is the market for residential …

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Is a Reverse Auction Feed-in Tariff “Market-Based”?

Lynne Kiesling Proponents say yes, but I’m not convinced. Here’s the story: the California Public Utilities Commission is considering some regulatory innovations to increase the share of renewables in the state’s generation portfolio, including a reverse-auction procurement solicitation for the provision of renewable power: In what might be a world first, the California Public Utilities …

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Any Good Analyses Comparing Renewable and Nuclear Costs?

Lynne Kiesling Today several items have floated across my radar screen contending that renewables are cheaper than nuclear power. Here, for example, is a snippet of a talk from Eric Schmidt of Google on the topic. I can see the possibility, given the innovations in renewables, incorporating the savings in foregone wires construction (although that …

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New Analysis: California’s Grid Can Accommodate More Renewables

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 …

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