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Electricity – Breakpoints, Tipping Points and Imagination

By Energy Rant One Comment
The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article last week – it would be fascinating if it weren’t sadly true. The title: Everyone Hates Customer Service. It is a perfect addition to my continuation of last week’s post regarding innovation with electric utilities. Are Electric Utilities in for a Taxi Ride? Tales of Customer Service Last week during a raging thunderstorm, I was in the pickup-window line at Walgreens. It’s a pickup window, not a chat room. Every time, the cars ahead of me take at least five minutes each. What are they talking about up there? The baseball trade…
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The PG&E Bankruptcy – Scorched Earth

By Energy Rant No Comments
This blog features dozens of posts regarding the nuances, obscurities, and upside down world of the public utility industry. To wit, every other industry provides things people need or want at the lowest possible price in competition with dozens or even hundreds of competitors or alternatives. Conversely, electric utilities with transmission and distribution systems are fully regulated with an obligation to serve all customers. Those customers have no other choice. The show must go on. To financially destroy a utility serves no one but attorneys. This post is about the bankruptcy and viability of the nation’s largest investor-owned utility, Pacific…
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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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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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State of the Electric Utility; Get Engaged

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
Recently, Utility Dive released its report, 2015 State of the Electric Utility – a compendium of utility company prognosticative surveys.  Findings include: Utilities will move away from vertical integration – see last week’s Utility 2.0. The biggest opportunities are distributed generation, transmission, and customer relationships. The biggest challenges include old infrastructure, old employees, and primitive regulatory models. The biggest concern is flat to declining sales. There will be more use of natural gas, wind, solar, and distributed generation. As my personal finance instructor used to say, the most likely price (trend) tomorrow is the price. First, I wanted to see…
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Electric Utility- A CEO’s Many Bosses

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff One Comment
I’ve come to realize over the course of many years that the electric utility business is fascinatingly challenging.  No other industry that I can think of has more bosses than an electric utility.  In fact, high ranking utility people promoted from Executive Vice President to President/CEO leave a job with one boss and accept a job with dozens of bosses. A utility must take orders from Washington.  Recently, the Supremes overturned a lower court ruling that effectively said, Michigan, you don’t have to listen to New Jersey to set limits on your emissions.  Now Mr. CEO, you do.The utility pleas…
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Opt Out Ruse

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Utility Stuff No Comments
In October 2011, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy delivered a report, “Follow the Leaders: Improving Large Customer Self-Direct Programs”.  But before I discuss/interpret that, what is a self-direct program?  Some large energy users wish to opt out of utility sponsored energy efficiency programs, and specifically they want to avoid paying the energy efficiency cost recovery rider.   This particular rider is a surcharge, similar to tax on gasoline that is supposed to be used for roads.  These large energy users state they can better invest this money in their own energy efficiency program – a self direct program.…
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