September 24, 2019 3:02 PM EDT
In the face of severe storms, utilities are investing billions of dollars in grid hardening to boost electricity resilience. But in the aftermath of such storms, vast numbers of restoration workers have also proven key to bringing power back fast. And those workers can add up to significant, and potentially repeating, costs. Read more >
September 17, 2019 4:48 PM EDT
Utility resource plans, which often take the form of “Integrated Resource Plans” (IRP), are a business plan, of sorts, for utilities. It lays out what utilities plan on doing to meet customer’s demands. In California, the process tends to look like this. Outside California, the primary questions being looked at are how much coal will be retired, how quickly it will be retired, and what resources will replace that coal. Read more >
August 27, 2019 2:56 PM EDT
Just a few years ago, Michigan passed a law to guide the state’s utilities on proper resource planning (known in the industry as an Integrated Resource Plan, or IRP). The point of the law was to help promote better utility planning. Utilities, after all, are poised to invest $150 billion in capital this year. When they don’t make smart decisions, it is customers like you who pay the price. Having now reviewed the latest of such plans–DTE’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP)–I am left wondering if the utilities themselves are listening to the legislated guidance. Read more >
January 2, 2019 11:34 AM EDT
Utilities are expected to make investments that are prudent and in the public interest; in return, they get to recover those costs plus a profit. All the utility investments, operating costs, and profits get pooled together and are reflected in customer utility bills. Expenditures that aren’t “prudent” and “in the public interest” (two key terms in the industry) don’t get to be recovered. But many utilities have found a way to get around guidelines and force customers to finance fossil fuel infrastructure, lobbying, and power plants that aren’t even built yet. Read more >
September 10, 2018 11:52 AM EDT
Keep your eyes and ears open for Community Choice Aggregation, already a major player for consumer energy choice in California and spreading rapidly. In this post, 2018 UCS Schneider Fellow Rebecca Behrens explains how CCAs work, where CCAs are forming, and what you should be on the look-out for as more communities get involved. Read more >
