tim echols Archives - Michaels Energy

Sep 25

Reverse Diversification Coming to a Utility Near You

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Rant One Comment

In my Personal Finance class as an undergraduate, our instructor used the term diworsification for large stalwart companies. Diworsification occurs when a company buys another company it knows nothing about and isn’t complimentary to the core business. Utilities got into this in the wild west days of 1990s deregulation, buying telecommunication and even real estate companies. That didn’t end well, and they went back to their core business of the regulated monopoly.In recent years we have experienced a reverse diversification of our power supply – namely in the reliable, conventional, thermal power plant sector. We still get almost half our…

Nov 10

Love0

Clean Power Plan & 111(d)

By Jeff Ihnen Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government One Comment

Last week I attended the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) conference in Atlanta. With that, I have a confession to make: I rarely sit and listen to speakers or take notes either because there is nothing new, and there is rarely any sort of technical or programmatic breakthrough to learn from. There are certainly differences in programs, but it comes down to blocking and tackling, so to speak – the basics – hard work, communication, persistence, trust, and so on. A couple speakers pulled me away from my work. One was a talk by Tim Echols, Commissioner from the Georgia…