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distributed energy resources

Shared Economy and Distributed Capitalism? Pffff

By Energy Rant No Comments
I spent last week at the Grid Evolution Summit presented by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) in the Nation’s Capital. The opening speaker, Jeremy Rifkin, has authored 20-some books, the most recent of which is called, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society.” This post is based on a related article you can read yourself, here. The crux of the book, message, and article is that “investor-based capitalism, which focuses on resources for immediate returns, will inevitably be replaced by a more distributed and streamlined network-based capitalism, alongside a sharing economy governed by a high-tech global commons.” You have heard the…
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Utilities – We all Un-Bundle

By Energy Rant One Comment
Our theme the last few weeks has covered technological change, consumer emotions, and irrational ways of thinking. The regulated monopoly and its cost-of-service model will not last forever. Someday it will be replaced. What might that look like? Right after last week’s post, From Crazy to Rational went up, I read Why Electric Utilities Should Replace Electric Rate Base in Fortnightly. Wow. How fortuitous! Cost-of-Service The cost-of-service model (COS) described in last week’s post, and verified by the Fortnightly article, motivates utilities to provide slightly more business efficiency than government. The COS model sets revenue requirements for utilities by capitalizing…
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Electric Utility Meet Amazon.com; Legislators Wake Up

By Energy Rant One Comment
This post, and the next couple, were spawned by an article written by John Hargrove in the latest edition of Public Utilities Fortnightly. The article’s title is, Utilities Can Do More to Partner with Customers. There may even be a follow-up to this article a few months from now. Wink. Wink. Anyone interested in this blog knows big changes are happening in the electric utility industry. For instance, I could write a series of posts on each of the following: State and federal subsidies are loading the grid with micro to utility-scale distributed energy resources, namely wind and solar photovoltaic…
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Low Electricity Prices – Impacts and Longevity

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
As I’m sitting here reading about topics including electricity prices, electric cars, and utility innovation in Public Utilities Fortnightly, it occurs to me: why are so many organizations and companies in the utility industry named after Edison when the electric car company is named after Tesla? This makes no sense, whatsoever. Edison was the vehement direct current advocate, and Tesla was the alternating current advocate. They were fierce rivals. But the car uses Edison’s direct current, while the utilities, of course, produce and deliver Tesla’s alternating current. I can only conclude that Edison was a better marketer, but I’ll bet…
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Things You Need to Know Re Electric Vehicles

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
Last week I wrote about understanding the customer and knowing what they want, whether the customer is the utility, regulator, or the end user of energy. Taking this a step beyond, the customer/client may not know what they want. For example, a hypothetical customer may want to control all energy use in their house from a smartphone, 100% renewable energy, and a smart-grid connected electric car. I am convinced once the hoopla settles, customers will want (1) cheap, reliable energy, and (2) any help to be more successful. Three weeks ago, I wrote about Messing with Near Perfection. That post…
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Distributed Energy Resources – Messing with Near Perfection

By Energy Rant One Comment
A couple years ago at an AESP conference, we had a fascinating speaker and topic. It was one of those that had me thinking deeply and philosophically. The subject was technology and the future. The takeaway: every problem is either a technical problem or one of human flaw. As for technical problems, there is nothing short of violating the laws of physics, including the second law of thermodynamics, that humans can’t and won’t someday solve: cancer, heart disease, failed or destroyed body parts, and of course, energy, and even aging. As we say at Michaels, (although we are not yet…
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Non-Wire Alternatives

I Disrupt this Blog with Non-Wire Alternatives

By Energy Rant No Comments
As I read in The Wall Street Journal last week, I would like to disrupt the use of the overused buzzword disruption and the use of buzzwords in general, but I gotta do what I gotta do – talk about Utility 2.0 again. Come to think of it, the utility industry, and those that supported it, must have been asleep at the wheel in the 1990s. That was Utility 2.0 – deregulation, which didn’t work out so well with widespread bankruptcies, some of which exist to this day. Utility 2.0 gave rise to hucksters like Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay…
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internet

The Bogus Energy Internet of Things

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
You have experienced a slow internet. Your music starts chopping. The video stops streaming. You curse the hour glass and spinning donuts. You have never experienced a substantial dip in power speed. Yes; power has a speed, and it is 60 Hertz (Hz), or 60 cycles a second. The reason I can argue it is a speed is because it is governed by spinning generation, namely steam turbines, from which we still get over half our electricity. For-Instance Bogusness #1: Frequency Modulation Your computer doesn’t melt down; servers don’t melt down; switches, hubs, routers – all that internet stuff will…
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Smart Grid Segmentation – Taking on the Dumb Meter Activists

By Energy Rant No Comments
I have written several times about smart grid hype; in particular about a year ago in Deaf and Mute Smart Meter. In that post, I described how utilities could truly treat demand response as a resource by using smart meter data, predictive consumption, and giving customers the power of their smart phone or tablet to participate in the infamous “utility of the future”. Customers want engagement, and they want control. Touché. A recent edition of Public Utilities Fortnightly (subscription) explained that indeed the smart grid is in a coma (my term). The title of the article is Smart Grid Isn’t Dead, but upon reading…
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customer satisfaction

The Value of Customer Satisfaction – Subduing the Eddie Haskells

By Energy Rant No Comments
I did some research on features and benefits, in general.  A quick internet search of features and benefits revealed that definitions vary from one source to the other.  Indeed, we surveyed our own management team for features and benefits of the services and programs we provide.  I found that one person’s program description was another’s features. Going further, what I found was that benefits aren’t necessarily the end of the story to the buyer.  What is the value of the benefit, and how does that relate to customer satisfaction? Customer satisfaction is a benefit of energy efficiency programs to any…
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