Michael Giberson From the Houston Chronicle, “Smart meter power usage data isn’t so current“: A Web site touted this week as providing near real-time power use information to electricity customers with new smart meters actually delays the information by up to two days, CenterPoint Energy has acknowledged. … The company said Monday the site would …
Michael Giberson The Houston Chronicle has added another voice to its roster of energy bloggers: Pat Wood III. Wood is former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and before that chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (though around here they usually list those two items the other way. In order of importance, …
Michael Giberson At the time of the initial announcement that Lubbock Power & Light would acquire the distribution assets of competing electric utility Xcel within the city, leaving LP&L as a monopolist, I took note of several inconvenient statements about the benefits of competition included in official LP&L history. (See “The (soon to be revised) …
The Revised History of Electric Competition in Lubbock Read More »
Michael Giberson After over 90 years of operating in competition with a rival electric utility in town, late last year Lubbock Power & Light and Xcel announced a deal in which municipal electric utility LP&L would buy out Xcel’s distribution assets and customer accounts in the city for $87 million, leaving LP&L as a monopoly …
How Valuable Will a Monopoly Be to Lubbock Power & Light? Read More »
Michael Giberson Much of the smart grid promise (and hype) implicitly suggests that the benefits will be scooped up by high-income consumers. Who else is going to be buying “grid aware” washer-dryer sets with built in wi-fi connectivity integrated into internet-linked home energy managements system? Still, the benefits won’t be limited to big spenders hoping …
Michael Giberson Over the holiday NYTimes.com posted a story by ClimateWire reporter Peter Behr that does a pretty good job of describing the proposed Tres Amigas project (proposing to link the three main electric regions in the U.S. – Eastern, Western, and Texas) and surrounding issues. Among other things, the story provides a good short …
Michael Giberson Over the weekend the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published a long story detailing views on outcomes in the restructured Texas retail power market. The newspaper story might be read as a kind of rejoinder to the view Lynne expressed as she announced the availability of the book on the Texas power market that she …
Texas Retail Electric Rates Remain Higher Than Neighboring States Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I’m pleased to announce the publication of a book on electricity restructuring in Texas that I co-edited with Andy Kleit. Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story is unique among applied regulatory analyses in several ways, most notably that half of the authors are not academics, but are instead the actual policymakers who worked directly …
New Book — Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story Read More »
Michael Giberson Many companies offer retail electric power contracts in the competitive retail portions of Texas, but for a long time the contracts have been kind of, you know, boring: either fixed rate or variable, if fixed then for 1 or 2 years. Renewable content offerings provided a little color, ranging up to 100 percent. …
New Meters Enabling New Rate Designs by Competitive Power Suppliers in Texas Read More »
Michael Giberson A few years ago Lubbock’s municipal electric utility was in a tight financial spot that threatened to put it and the city into bankruptcy. When the utility pushed through a rate increase, customers started switching to competing electric utility Xcel. The dwindling customer base forced the municipal utility to find another way out …
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