Michael Giberson
What is the current and future state of regional wholesale electricity markets?
The conference also will be webcast - the official notices says it will be available for a fee, but the event page on the Commission’s web calendar says the webcast is free. I don’t know which version is correct, but […]
Michael Giberson
The marginal cost of generation from a wind power generator is essentially zero, which means once the generation is installed you pretty much want to use every bit of wind power generated. A problem, of course, is that wind-based generation is not particularly dispatchable. You don’t tell it when to run, you […]
Michael Giberson
The reason, he says, it that much peak load generation is natural gas fueled, while baseload generation tends to be mostly coal fueled. All the load shifting that dynamic pricing encourages will move consumption away from gas and toward coal. Given that coal generation tends to produce much higher levels of pollutants […]
Lynne Kiesling
Wired provides a . Even though we do not yet have widespread retail choice in electric power service as residential customers, these ideas can reduce energy bills and reduce overall resource use:
Aside from the nerd bragging rights, fully-automated homes can be much more energy efficient. Left the light on in the basement after that […]
Michael Giberson
Geothermal power generators use temperature differences between the surface and areas deeper in the earth to move a gas or liquid through a loop and drive a turbine. (One example is the , which uses 165°F water from a geothermal well to help keep the ice museum cold.)
The system uses the difference between […]
Michael Giberson
, writing at Energy Central/T&D Automation:
The concept of an intelligent electric utility infrastructure or “Smart Grid” is attracting wide interest among utilities, consultants, regulators, and other utility stakeholders. The widespread interest, however, is accompanied by widely differing expectations about when Smart Grid will emerge. Some consultants and vendors confidently proclaim that the Smart Grid […]
Michael Giberson
As “) on various costs embedded in electric power bills was reasonably good. But the article covers several aspects of the overall picture without always being clear about the role played by the charges. From the economics point of view, the vital element of any charge included in the consumer’s bill is […]
Michael Giberson
The Washington Post today contains a story titled, “”:
As they watch their bills climb, electricity customers in the Washington region might be surprised to know they are paying costs that have nothing to do with the rising price of fuel.
Virginians are paying Dominion Power tens of millions of dollars a year for a nuclear […]
