You know that experience, when you buy a new car, and suddenly you see the model everywhere? Since Superstorm Sandy I’ve had the equivalent experience with the term ‘microgrid.’

Policymakers and thought leaders in the US Northeast started talking microgrid in earnest shortly (more…)

Advanced meters are the most visible component of recent smart grid deployments, dominating much public and media attention. However, industry members recognize even greater opportunities and imperatives for modernizing distribution infrastructure and operations further up the line. Distribution automation (DA) is a hot topic in the utility industry, encompassing (more…)

On January 24, the California Public Utitlies Commission will vote on an important precedent for using renewables to enhance grid reliability.

Grid reliability requires that there be a certain amount of local generation–known in wonkspeak as ‘local capacity requirements’, or LCR. (more…)

We’re thrilled to see that the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) adopted a Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program last week.

We’d like to congratulate all the folks who, after three years of hard work testifying and developing the research and policy, made this victory possible (looking at you, LABC, Environment California, Sierra Club, Global Green, and many many more). (more…)

Those of us who maintain optimism for a future than includes sustainable practices in energy generation place a great deal of hope in “distributed generation” – the concept in which the model of buying electricity from huge utilities becomes increasingly irrelevant, and in which individual users generate more – or all — of their own. Such a schema has many obvious (more…)

The temperature is 100 degrees and we have no air conditioning, no running water, no telephone and no Internet. It’s been 60 hours since our household lost electricity because of the super derecho, a rare surprise storm that swept ten US states and the nation’s capital on June 29. (more…)

Each investor-owned utility in California has developed a program designed to use distributed generation photovoltaics as wholesale generators. The approved programs total 1.1 GW over the next 4 years–an amount equivalent to the daytime output of 2 mid-sized coal plants. The first (more…)

The European Union (EU) is made up of 27 countries and over 500 million people. Each country (more commonly called “States”) has its own sovereign identity but the governing body of the EU has rights to set limited legislation and broader policy direction for its member States. Initially set up as a trading bloc for (more…)

A new paper by Stanford lawyer Felix Mormann argues that pricing alone will not drive the transition to renewable energy, one of the key ingredients to a low-carbon economy necessary to mitigate the impacts of climate change. He identifies and analyzes the obstacles presently barring the rise of renewables, evaluates (more…)

In Arizona, the Arizona Corporation Commission just approved Arizona Public Service’s 2011 implementation plan (big PDF) for the Renewable Energy Standard. The plan includes two policies for wholesale distributed generation:

Small Generator Standard Offer. About 95 MW over the next 3 years, for systems (more…)