February 08, 2010

The strains to our transmission system have been evident for some time.

"The U.S. transmission system is under tremendous strain and only marginally stable," Wayne Brunetti, the former chief executive officer of Xcel Energy, observed in 2002. "It was designed as a regional system and has been forced to function as a national system, a function for which it was not designed and does not handle very well."

January 13, 2010

Restructuring of the electricity sector has gotten lost in the national energy debate. But the matter is still important in many states and especially Pennsylvania and Texas.

The freeing of wholesale energy markets to allow generators to sell their power to other utilities or other industrial sites has borne fruit but the success of competition in the retail sector has been an ongoing question. Advocates say that open access has brought down prices and given consumers more choices. But critics say that it has only benefited a few well-healed energy marketers while raising rates for most.

January 11, 2010

Round One of the Copenhagen Accord is now finished. And so the real work must be done -- to hammer out the details on just how global temperatures can be kept in check. One issue that must be resolved is that of nuclear energy and the role it will play.

Decision-makers are now challenged with how to cut the rate of greenhouse gas emissions while also becoming more self-reliant. As they gather in the coming months they will take into account that nuclear power has relatively few such releases associated with it while the uranium used to create the electricity is plentiful.

Sunday, 03 January 2010

The United States Advanced Battery Consortium LLC, an organization whose members are Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., is seeking requests for proposal information (RFPIs) for four projects related to advanced battery development for hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric and electric vehicles.

USABC's four RFPIs, for consideration of contracts that will include a 50 percent minimum cost share by developers, are for:

• development of advanced high performance batteries for electric vehicle (EV) applications;
• development of advanced energy storage systems for high-power, lower energy-energy storage system (LEESS) for power-assist hybrid electric vehicle (PAHEV) applications;
• development of advanced high-performance batteries for plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) applications; and
• a technology assessment of proposed advanced battery technologies for EV applications.

December 28, 2009

Jim Avery, senior vice president of power supply for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), has a story to tell about smart grid technology and workforce education. This pairing has really taken off at his utility and throughout the area.

"The story is really about the power industry. More will happen in our industry in the next 10 years than has happened over the past hundred years. Now we have smart grid and there's the potential for all sorts of change -- it tells us about outages, is capable of self healing and requires no human intervention," Avery said.