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utility death spiral

Pricing PV Energy; The Tomato Wins!

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Renewable Energy 2 Comments
This post is brought to you by Midwest Energy News; in particular, the opinion piece, Time For Monopoly Reform in Minnesota.  It is written by Tea Partier Debbie Dooley from Atlanta.  You may have heard or read that the Tea Party and solar advocacy groups (a strange alliance) have been singing photovoltaic folk songs around southern campfires. I am not anti-renewable, but I am very much anti-misinform and mislead.  That is what The Energy Rant is all about.  To prove my love of renewables, as I was driving back from my mother’s over the Fourth of July weekend on a…
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Utility Industry Disruption? Electricity is not a Movie

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
Because everyone reading this blog is in some way reliant on money from electric and/or gas utilities, I pay a lot of attention to the utility business and things like technological disruption and the utility death spiral.  I wrote about the utility death spiral back in April.  As a result of this fine article in greentechgrid, I’d like to bloviate about ballyhooed disruption. Disruption is an updated buzzword for “game changer”.  Prime example: Netflix to Blockbuster Video, Au Revoir. Greentechgrid notes a bunch of examples, and I have taken liberty to enhance the list by tabulating them into disrupted (Blockbuster)…
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Utility Death Spiral? The Duck has Your Back

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff 15 Comments
There is weekly, if not daily, chatter about the end of the monopolistic electric utility systems we have today.  They call it the utility death spiral, and it goes like this: Distributed generation, also known as DG, which includes rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems will compete directly with utility power. Utilities are stuck with fixed rate base for which they need to be paid through purchased energy from customers. Photovoltaic may produce competitively-priced energy for some customers after the bevy of incentives and tax breaks.  Home-generated electricity drives down the utility’s revenue. Utility raises prices to cover their fixed cost.…
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