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Solar Shines Bright As California Smashes Generation Record
California notched another first last year—becoming the first state in the nation to generate more than 5 percent of its electricity from utility-scale solar according to data released last month by...
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EIA Energy Outlook Underscores Efficacy Of Efficiency Efforts
The Energy Information Administration’s annual energy outlook, which was released last week, is like manna from heaven for geeky industry analysts and commentators, most definitely including myself....
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Public Is Way Ahead Of Congressionial GOP On Climate Change, RFF Polling Shows
Resources for the Future released some interesting global warming polling data last week that should be required reading for energy and environmental policy wonks nationwide. Not surprisingly, the...
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The Solar Scenario: Utilities Can Profit By Embracing The Future
The utility industry has been waging a spirited campaign against state net metering policies for months (see my earlier post here), arguing that these programs unfairly benefit residential solar users...
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Incredible 23 Percent Of Home Electric Use Could Be Wasted
So you’re a thoughtful energy consumer—you turn the lights off when you leave a room, you turn your thermostat down so it doesn’t run when you’re not home and you have even purchased a few light...
View ArticleFaulty Logic Drives Fallin’s Decision On Wind Incentives
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill last week that will eliminate a state-wide property tax exemption for wind power developers beginning in 2017. The move, which comes at a time when Oklahoma is...
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Utilities Risk Losing Commercial Customers Without New Approach
The U.S. commercial sector spent just under $146 billion on electricity in 20141, and that has prompted business leaders across the country to sit up and take notice. In a fascinating study released...
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Reliability Is Key Issue For Electric Utilities In Changing Market
It’s not always about dollars and cents. In a recent article in Utility Dive (the full piece can be found here), Tucson Electric Power’s Carmine Tilghman made a big deal about the unfavorable...
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LEDs Pose Same Threat As Solar & Net Metering For Utility Ratemaking
What is the difference between LEDs and residential solar panels? Plenty, clearly, but for a utility executive worried about slow or no load growth they amount to exactly the same thing—trouble. I have...
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Out On A Limb: Energy Storage To Track Rapid Development Of Marcellus Shale, PV
Predicting the future is hard, I get it, but it shocks me how abysmally wrong some of the smartest people in the business can be, even with the best information. For example, in a recent interview with...
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215 Million And Rising: Surge In LED Installs Is A Growing Threat To Utility...
The cumulative number of light emitting diodes (LEDs) installed across the United States has soared during the past two years—topping 215 million at the end of 2014 according to DOE’s latest data....
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Green Power Is The Key For Utilities To Keep Their Commercial Clients
For utility executives used to 40-year planning horizons, the past 10 years have been, shall we say, a difficult learning experience. Ten years ago shale gas production was still at miniscule levels...
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Republican Leaders Badly Out Of Step With Party Regulars
Congressional Republican leaders and a number of GOP governors have marched virtually in lockstep for the past seven years in the opposite direction of President Obama’s environmental proposals,...
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Nuclear Power Economics Requires Believing In `Impossible Things’
It is increasingly clear that the economics of nuclear power don’t add up. Just in the past two and a half years, for example, seven plants at six sites have been shut down due to uneconomic...
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Taking A Step Back Brings Energy Revolution Clearly Into Focus
It is easy to get lost in the day-to-day minutia of the revolution under way in the energy industry—announcements of technology improvements, installation milestones and price reductions of all kinds...
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Slow And Steady: Efficiency Measures Hold Utility Load Growth To Record Lows
In today’s rapidly changing energy industry, efficiency measures seldom show up in the headlines—slow, steady improvements simply don’t have much `sizzle.’ But while they may be boring, these slow,...
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Corporate Interest In Green Energy Requires New Thinking From Electric Utilities
There was a news nugget in the American Wind Energy Association’s latest market report (released last week, the executive summary can be found here) that should be required reading for electric utility...
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LEDs Clobber CFLs; Turn Indoor Farming Into New Growth Market
The two events had nothing to do with one another, and yet they are inextricably linked. I am an inveterate coupon clipper and in the latest mailer from BJ’s Wholesale Club (my big box savings store of...
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New NREL Study: Prodigious Potential For Rooftop PV In U.S.
It’s pie-in-the-sky by design, but a new report from DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory on the technical potential of rooftop solar in the U.S. is eye-opening nonetheless. All told, NREL said,...
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Utility Execs’ New Worry: Economic Growth, Electricity Sales No Longer Linked
If you just glance at the chart below you will dismiss it out of hand—boring, you’ll yell, why are you wasting my time with that graphic, you’ll ask. But take a second, closer look and you’ll see that...
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