ferc posts, articles, and infographics

Efforts to Promote Energy Storage Should Look to the States

March 3, 2012 by James Greenberger
with 422 views

Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr

Many of the barriers to deploying distributed energy storage arise, not from a lack of federal policy, but from inconsistent and antiquated state regulations that restrict how storage and other assets located on the distribution portion of the grid can be owned and used. [read more]

Overcoming Hurdles to Clean Energy Commercialization

November 21, 2011 by David Levy
with 202 views

Despite the mounting evidence of severe climate change, there is a funding crisis for potential solutions. The Department of Energy released data at the beginning of November showing that global emissions of CO2 rose 6% in 2010, despite the ongoing economic recession. This trajectory is higher than the worst case projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in it’s 2007 Fourth Assessement Report. The impacts are already being felt. A new IPCC report concludes that climate change is causing more extreme weather, especially heat waves, heavy precipitation, and coastal flooding (though the super-cautious IPCC hedged on hurricanes). [read more]

Community Scale Solar Power

August 19, 2011 by Jonathan Smith
with 487 views

John Farrell says, “‘Community scale’ solar is likely to provide the best combination of affordability, speed, and opportunity for local economic benefit.” But, what does he mean by “community scale” and does it fit with Big Eddie’s concept of centralized power (Sig Heil!). There are two good sources of solar installed cost in the U.S.... [read more]

FERC: “Weather-Related Causes” Explain Power Supply Problems During 2011's Extreme Winter

August 18, 2011 by Michael Giberson
with 251 views

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) have issued their report on the events surrounding electric power and natural gas supply interruptions around the Southwest United States in early February, 2001. The culprit? According to the press release: “the task force... [read more]

Record-Setting Power Consumption In Texas -- ERCOT Narrowly Avoids Rolling Blackouts

August 14, 2011 by Michael Giberson
with 856 views

Image via Wikipedia

Much in the news in Texas these past few weeks have been new peak power records and several grid emergency conditions which saw the ERCOT power system narrowly avoid rolling blackout a time or two. Tom Fowler of the Houston Chronicle‘s Fuel Fix blog has been tracking the story closely, see selected links below. Rebecca Smith provided a... [read more]

The Energy Storage Hand Gets More Interesting

July 25, 2011 by Christine Hertzog
with 982 views

The cards dealt to the energy storage industry are looking better now than in the past. Here are three of them, all played because of the growing presence of Smart Grid technologies that enable solutions and policies that encourage energy storage markets. One wild card is also listed here, and it could have significant influence over the... [read more]

Power Outages, Hot and Cold

June 1, 2011 by Michael Giberson
with 395 views

A FuelFix post by Tom Fowler relays ERCOT’s report that the Texas grid operator expects to have enough power to serve customers reliably this summer. At the end of Fowler’s post he casually mentioned, in connection with the rolling blackout in ERCOT last winter, “a report by federal reliability officials concluded power plant operators... [read more]

Opportunities in Power Market Design: Wind Power, Capacity Markets, Optimization Software

May 10, 2011 by Michael Giberson
with 221 views

Michael Giberson A handful of stories raising power market design issues: The Oregonian, ”Northwest wind power to double but inconsistency creates nightmare“: “The value of BPA’s surplus power sales are already being undermined by wind energy sloshing into the market. That ultimately increases rates for its public utility customers... [read more]

Grid Operators Should Pay for Energy R&D

January 7, 2011 by James Greenberger
with 1,355 views

In thinking about a new focus for U.S. energy policy over the next few years, A Business Plan for America’s Energy Future, published last June by the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), makes for a good read. The Business Plan proposes a number of interesting ideas with respect to national energy policy, the most compelling of which is that the federal government should spend $16 billion per year on energy R&D. [read more]

Google Denies Renewable Energy Trader Intentions

May 2, 2010 by Vicky Portwain
with 261 views

Google has denied rumours that it is set to become and energy trader at a GreenNet conference in San Francisco last week. With hundreds of millions of customers, Google uses mammoth computer infrastructure to keep everything going. However Google’s carbon reduction intentions have been well publicised over the last year. From biofuel... [read more]

Smart Grid Heavy Hitters – Jon Wellinghoff, Chair of US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – part 2

April 29, 2010 by Tom Raftery
with 210 views

Jon Wellinghoff is the Chairman of the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – the FERC is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. I recorded an interview with Jon a few weeks back. The resulting video was too good to reduce to a single piece, so I split it... [read more]

Integrating variable energy resources to the electric power grid (cont.)

April 27, 2010 by Michael Giberson
with 159 views

In January we noted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s questions concerning the integration of “variable energy resources” to the electric power grid. FERC asked for comments; over 120 comments have been submitted in reply (so far). Peter Behr, of ClimateWire, characterizes some of the positions submitted in the... [read more]

Smart Grid Heavy Hitters – Jon Wellinghoff, Chair of US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – part 1

April 15, 2010 by Tom Raftery
with 203 views

Jon Wellinghoff is the Chairman of the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) – the FERC is the agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. As such, the FERC was the agency which Google Energy applied to for its licence to buy and sell electricity on the... [read more]

Tres Amigas gets half a loaf from FERC, tips on gaining other half

March 23, 2010 by Michael Giberson
with 158 views

On March 18, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission acted on the Tres Amigas project’s two regulatory requests submitted last October. Tres Amigas has proposed to link the large scale power interconnections covering the eastern and western halves of the United States with the ERCOT interconnection in Texas. The New Mexico-... [read more]

Is there really any need for baseload power?

March 17, 2010 by Tom Raftery
with 540 views

Photo credit wonderferret The electricity grid may not need “baseload” generation sources like coal and nuclear to backup the variability of supply from renewables. Jon Wellinghof is the Chairman of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is an independent agency that amongst other things, regulates the interstate... [read more]