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Why Smart Grid Advocates Should Learn About Utility Regulation

By Bob Jenks, Executive Director, Oregon Public Utility Commission, October, 20, 2011 - Many of us have heard of the Smart Grid and its potential to improve the electricity delivery system. Moving to a two-way digital grid will improve the grid's reliability and offer a variety of new potential applications. Rather than shut down wind turbines at night when there is more power generated than the grid can absorb, a Smart Grid could use hot water heaters and commercial freezers to store excess energy. The Smart Grid can vary the charging of an electric car so the charging rises and falls with wind power production. The Smart Grid can also know when and where there is a power outage, rather than rely on phone calls from customers to report outages.  more...
Article Viewed 3835 Times  |  19 Comments

A Historical Perspective of Electric Power Regulation

By Harry Valentine, Commentator/Energy Researcher, , October, 06, 2011 - There was a time prior to the year 1900 when electric power generation was privately own and essentially free from political regulation. The development of the electric light bulb and the electrically powered streetcar encouraged the development of large-scale electric power generation. At the time, large reciprocating steam piston engines were already well proven in marine and railway transportation while hydraulic river turbines were well proven at mills and factories located along rivers and streams. The engines and technologies were easily adapted to driving electrical generators.  more...
Article Viewed 3246 Times  |  13 Comments

Preparing for Dodd-Frank

By Michel Zadoroznyj, Vice President - Treasury & Regulatory Compliance Division, Triple Point Technology, Inc., July, 06, 2011 - New legislation brings in its wake a period of confusion and adjustment, as the businesses and individuals it affects come to terms with new responsibilities and/or restrictions. But the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has been accompanied by unusually high levels of FUD -- fear, uncertainty and doubt.  more...
Article Viewed 3095 Times  |  1 Comments

An Invaluable Reminder about Electric Deregulation

By Ferdinand E. Banks, Professor, , February, 17, 2011 - This short paper borrows from my forthcoming energy economics textbook (2011), and consists of a part of the lecture that I once desperately wanted to present at either the Stockholm School of Economics, or at the research organization called Centre for Business and Policy Studies (SNS), which is also located in the Swedish capital. The reason is that several years ago (together with the brilliant Norwegian economist Eirik Amundsen), the president of the Stockholm School, Professor Lars Bergmann, published an article with the provocative title 'Why has the Nordic Electricity Market Worked so Well' -- although in reality, practically from the beginning of deregulation, almost every newspaper in Sweden has expressed on its front or editorial page, or in its business section, the opposite point of view.  more...
Article Viewed 4582 Times  |  34 Comments

What Unrest In Egypt Means for Oil Prices at Home

By David Holt, President, Consumer Energy Alliance, February, 08, 2011 -

 more...
Article Viewed 3496 Times  |  13 Comments

Global Adjustment: A Political Time Bomb in Ontario, Canada

By Peter Murphy, Associate, Gowlings LLP, February, 11, 2010 - Prior to April, 2009, most Ontario electricity consumers in Ontario, Canada paid little attention to the "Provincial Benefit" line item on their electricity bills. They had little reason to. Since its inception in 2005, the Provincial Benefit, known in Ontario's electricity industry as the Global Adjustment, was a relatively small adjustment on Ontario electricity consumers' electricity bills.  more...
Article Viewed 4977 Times  |  27 Comments

A Premise for the Pendulum

By Roger Feldman, Counsel, Andrews Kurth LLP, January, 26, 2010 - The end of one year and beginning of another makes one think of the various theories of history. "History" is the human effort to anthromorphize time so as to hold the fear of uncertainty at bay and make interpretable sense out of messy reality. For some historians, the past has moved in cycles. For the optimistic, teleologically toward an even better level of stasis. For the pessimistic, inevitably it is a jagged saw-toothed graph, with the downturn the product of corrupt human nature.  more...
Article Viewed 3737 Times  |  3 Comments

The Right FIT for California

By Tam Hunt, President, Community Renewable Solutions, LLC, August, 24, 2009 - California is on the precipice of passing into law a game-changing Feed-In Tariff (FIT) policy that will unleash the tremendous potential of renewable energy and provide a massive economic boost in California.  more...
Article Viewed 5118 Times  |  18 Comments

Cooperative Federalism

By Roger Feldman, Counsel, Andrews Kurth LLP, July, 06, 2009 - In the absence of "Cooperative Federalism" the development of so-called "Green Infrastructure," as contemplated both by the Stimulus Package and by the forthcoming initiatives from the President and Congress in the areas of energy, security, and climate change regulation, will be thwarted.  more...
Article Viewed 5861 Times  |  10 Comments

The Pitfalls of and Opportunities in Electric Power Deregulation

By Harry Valentine, Commentator/Energy Researcher, , June, 01, 2009 - The deregulation of several sectors of the national economy became the vogue during the Reagan administration in Washington and the Thatcher administration in the UK. Margaret Thatcher had read The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek (Nobel laureate in 1976) and was inspired to privatize some of Britain's state-owned enterprises as the socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed. Friederich Hayek had been a student of Ludwig von Mises whose treatise entitled Socialism detailed the downfalls of state ownership and state management of a national economy and how such an economy would ultimately fail.  more...
Article Viewed 6839 Times  |  84 Comments
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