Distributed Energy

Executives from power companies operating in different markets revealed how their firms are being affected by low natural gas prices, pressures to achieve fuel diversity, distributed energy generation, and lax demand growth, among a number of topics. The annual executive roundtable panel at the ELECTRIC POWER Conference and Exhibition on April 19 was moderated by […]

By an 85-12 vote, the U.S. Senate passed the first comprehensive energy bill in nearly a decade, bringing a successful conclusion to months of legislative effort and overcoming a series of roadblocks in the full Senate related to the water quality crisis in Flint, Mich. The product of more than a year of bipartisan work […]

Two senior power sector executives opened the 2016 ELECTRIC POWER Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans April 19 with a message that generators need to “think big” and embrace possibilities of disruptive technologies—or risk being run over on the road to the future. Leo Denault, chairman and CEO of Entergy Corp., delivered the opening keynote […]

In a joint report issued April 5, a group of California agencies and utilities said that if the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility north of Los Angeles cannot be returned to service after a major leak this past winter, repeated gas curtailments could occur this summer, leading to significant loss of generating capacity in Southern […]

Distributed generation (DG) is receiving much attention as a resource that can facilitate the development of a smarter, more resilient, and more sustainable electric grid. Several jurisdictions, including New

Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison (SCE), announced on March 29 that it’s launching a new business unit called Edison Energy that will provide energy consulting services to large energy consumers across the country to help them in identifying and exploiting opportunities to lower energy costs, reduce complexity of energy management, and meet […]

The Edison Electric Institute has come under fire for a new communications plan that was intended to depict utilities as more community-minded.

Whether utilities, technology providers, or independent third-party upstarts are best suited to create a reliable recipe for microgrid development remains an open question.

Although new microgrid configurations, technologies, and business models are still evolving in the U.S., some lessons have been learned in the past few years. Aside from the fact that financing nontraditional/non-campus microgrids is hard, if there’s one overarching lesson, it’s that a microgrid designed to provide only one benefit or rely on only one generation source is unlikely to succeed.

Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) was adopted as policy beginning in September 2010, some six months before the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, and full legislative support was

The governors of 17 U.S. states on February 16 signed a landmark agreement to cooperate on expanding clean energy, energy efficiency, and modernizing energy infrastructure. The Governors’ Accord For A New Energy Future makes the case that “new energy solutions” can “provide more durable and resilient infrastructure, and enable economic growth, while protecting the health […]

In large part because of swelling supplies of natural gas, and failing crude oil prices that have helped depress gas prices around the world, as well as because of its environmental advantage over fuel oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) is garnering growing interest as a generation fuel. While huge, multi-billion-dollar LNG import and export terminals […]

Combined heat and power (CHP) is hot again—in more ways than one. After a surge in capacity during the 1980s, kick-started by the 1978 federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) that was designed

Advances in firing biomass, including bagasse, in Cuban sugarcane operations.

In its recently released Energy Technology Perspectives 2015, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted that innovation in the energy sector differs from progress in other sectors in that it tends to move

A unique wind funnel–based power generating system that is quickly garnering interest from investors could see first construction kickoff in the first quarter of 2016. The INVELOX (short for “increased

  Look out Tesla, the Germans are coming. The U.S. residential energy storage market took another step forward on January 29 when German firm sonnen announced that it was partnering with solar manufacturer SolarWorld to offer residential solar-plus-storage systems in the U.S., much like the systems announced by Tesla and Solar City last April. Unlike […]

By a 6–2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court on January 25 ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had authority under the Federal Power Act (FPA) to issue rules requiring equal market participation by demand response (DR) resources. FERC Order 745, issued in 2011, required the nation’s Independent System Operators (ISOs) and Regional Transmission […]

New energy technologies, decreasing renewable energy costs, and low natural gas prices are forcing changes in the way traditional power companies must plan for the future. “A fundamental rethink is now well underway about how energy gets produced, delivered, consumed, and managed in many parts of the world, including the U.S.,” said Ethan Zindler, head […]

In his final State of the Union (SOTU) address on January 12, and arguably less so than in any other address he has given over the last seven years, President Obama made sparse mention of energy and climate change. The president dedicated most of the energy references in his address to “clean” energy, encapsulating wind […]

The autonomous region of Xinjiang has a strategic position in China’s economy, yet several conditions limit the most effective use of its fuels. This article provides an overview of the situation. A more detailed version, with maps and tables, appears here under the same title. Since ancient times, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) has held […]

In mid-November, current members of POWER’ s Generating Company Advisory Team responded by email to a set of questions about their concerns, challenges, and new initiatives as they plan for the year ahead

From issuance of the final Clean Power Plan to mammoth mergers, 2015 will be remembered as a tumultuous year. Twelve months ago, as folks were emerging from an eventful 2014, POWER made some bold predictions, including that fuel economics will drive 2015 U.S. power markets, and the labor crunch will complicate the gas turbine arms […]

North America’s reserve margins are trending downward, even though electricity demand has generally fallen, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) warned in a new report. The international regulatory authority established to gauge and improve the reliability of North America’s bulk power system (BPS) said in its annual long-term report that electricity demand has dropped […]

The world has a problem. According to the World Bank, 1.1 billion people lack access to any form of modern energy service, and more than double that number lack access to adequate, reliable, affordable, and

Solar power has taken off the training wheels. Once an afterthought, solar photovoltaic (PV) generation has been one of the major sources of new capacity for several years. According to statistics from the

Largely dependent on imported fuel oil, many island systems must grapple with soaring electricity costs and reliability issues, in part because they are isolated and they don’t benefit from economies of scale. But some nations are seeking alternatives. It’s the same story all over the world. To fuel their economies and support growing populations, geographically […]

Will rooftop solar photovoltaics be the most economical way to deploy today’s hottest new generating technology, or will central utility solar PV systems be the best economic bet? Is there a third way? The answer appears to be “yes.” Solar photovoltaic (PV) power has emerged as the hottest new trend in renewable energy generation, primarily […]

Battery energy storage has exploded in deployment over the past several years, but the majority of it by capacity, especially in North America, is deployed at grid scale. That may be a problem, because a new study from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) suggests the greatest value to the system lies with behind-the-meter batteries—distributing battery […]

If you’re looking to generate distributed power with gas, your options are broader than ever, with a range of efficient, clean-burning technologies to chose from. Knowing which option is the right one depends on a balance of site constraints, fuel supplies, and environmental oversight. When California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), a 14,000-student university north […]