Back when the light bulb was the killer app of 1879 and the nascent electrical grid was shaped by a series of technological innovations, reliability was the most important metric to structure grid performance expectations. People had much less reliance on the grid then. The economy could get along with the technologies from a pre-electrical…
State regulatory commissions have significant impacts on their local economies through oversight of privately-owned electric, natural gas, water, telecommunications, and various transportation entities. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) organizes regular Committee meetings that help commissioners develop public policy and share best practices. Their recent Summer Committee meetings in Portland, Oregon focused on…
Utilities traditionally focused on engineering the electric grid for reliability, and have well established metrics and benchmarks to gauge their performance to reliability objectives. But today’s grid also has serious vulnerabilities highlighted in recent widespread and lengthy power outages caused by downed power lines. Smart Grid technologies offer the opportunity to significantly re-engineer the supply…
The most magnificent machine in the world, our national electric grid, is managed and measured for reliability. Reliability is an important objective – we all depend on utilities delivering their best efforts to Keep The Lights On (KTLO). And utility workers have done amazing work in maintaining our aging electrical system infrastructure. But this infrastructure…
One hundred and fifty-five thousand meters in ten states are still without power from the grid as a result of storms that occurred at the end of June. The household occupants and business owners relying on these meters sweltered and tallied up the impacts of losses caused by that lack of power. Predictably, there were…
Before moderating my session at a data analytics conference this past week, I heard an interesting comment from a utility representative about the scalability of data analytics solutions. He recounted that many vendors were pitching solutions that look good on paper and in small pilots, but the solutions lacked the ability to handle really big…
The dust is still settling on the recent United Nation’s Rio+20 environmental summit, and reactions range from disappointment at the lack of national governmental consensus to optimism at the range and success of local governmental and corporate actions. None of this alters the fact that climate change is a slow-moving disaster that is going to…
The dust is still settling on the recent United Nation’s Rio+20 environmental summit, and reactions range from disappointment at the lack of national governmental consensus to optimism at the range and success of local governmental and corporate actions. None of this alters the fact that climate change is a slow-moving disaster that is going to…
Installations of solar systems that generate electricity are coming down in price due to materials innovations and manufacturing efficiencies. But it’s been a challenge to wring costs from the part of the value chain that is focused on business origination – identifying and marketing to qualified opportunities, conducting site assessments and system design, and financing…
There are some striking similarities between the old Bell Telephone system and today’s regulated electric utilities. Both were highly regulated, had similar mission-critical mindsets to deliver electricity or dial tone, and did not have to compete for customers given their monopoly status. But then, the phone system was deregulated, and we learned that wire services…