Decoupling: The Key to Incenting Electric Utilities to Promote Energy Efficiency

What is Utility Decoupling? Decoupling allows a utility to separate its regulated revenue from changes in energy sales. Thus, it addresses a potential disincentive to promote energy efficiency. In so doing, decoupling eliminates a critical barrier to increased utility-sponsored investment in cost-effective energy efficiency measures and other clean energy resources by, in effect, mitigating the...

Understanding the Benefits and Risks of SF6

What are the Characteristics of SF6? Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) is colorless, odorless, non-flammable, and chemically stable gas. At room temperature it does not react with any other substance. This stability is the result of a symmetrical arrangement of six fluorine atoms around a central sulfur atom. It makes the gas useful as an effective electrical insulator that extinguishes arcs; making it...

What is the Peak Oil Theory?

What is the Peak Oil Theory? During the 1950’s, and ‘1960s, noted geologist M. King Hubbert became world-renowned based on his prediction that the fossil fuel era would end in the relatively near future. He noted that the production of typical oil reservoirs tend to follow a bell-shaped curve, reaching a peak and then declining irreversibly. He predicted in 1956 that U.S. based oil...

The Source of Oil – Is it Biotic or Abiotic?

Drilling for Oil The origin of oil has been the subject of an extended debate since its founding in the mid-19th century. Some professionals believe that oil is primordial – that it dates back to Earth’s origin – and thus was made through an inorganic process. This thesis is characterized as the abiotic (also called abiogenic or inorganic) theory. Others argue that oil was produced...

Distribution Substation Automation-Fixing a “Failure to Communicate”

  It is surprising to most people who are not familiar with the details of the electric industry that utilities do not typically have extensive and continuous monitoring of all their critical equipment. While the installation of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems at distribution substations provides some remote monitoring capabilities, many distribution substations have no...

Transitioning from Centralized to Distributed Intelligence

 Maximize the Value of Smart Grid Technology   There remains significant electricity industry emphasis on implementing smart grid technologies. These implementations include the investments necessary to refurbish and/or replace aging electric distribution infrastructure to enable a Smart Grid. As the electric industry succeeds in linking these related aspects of a truly modernized grid, few...

Grid Automation: More Than Smart Meters (AMI or AMR)

keep the air clean for our children Many energy utilities have made a move to develop a power system that combines traditional and cutting-edge technologies to support the ever-increasing array of digital services desired by customers while effectively managing the requisite flow of energy. A number of fully integrated smart grid communities (e.g. Boulder, CO) are being developed, anticipating...

Energy Transmission and Distribution Infrastructure-Cornerstone to an effective Smart Grid Network

Executive and legislative policy makers at national, state, and local levels of government are highly focused on critical infrastructure issues of all types. Their focus encompasses both infrastructure security (which has vastly increased since September 2001 and further since the Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007) and the role that energy (specifically electricity) plays in the economic...

An Introduction to Solar Power Generation

Solar Power Generation   There are three main types of solar power energy: Photovoltaic Solar Power Concentrating Solar Power Solar Thermal Energy   Photovoltaic Solar Power Technology Photovoltaic solar power results from electricity generated by solar cells by converting sunlight directly into electricity.  The basic solar principles (i.e. that certain materials can produce small...

Service Restoration Impacts

As electric utilities confront the challenge of reducing the duration of service interruptions (measured as “Customer Minutes of Interruptions” or CMI), there are a limited number of factors that are common among poor and marginally performing utilities: Weather is the primary differentiator in electric utilities meeting their reliability targets, particularly when they are in the midst of...