Archive for March, 2008

On February 26, 2008, a bill was introduced in the state House (H.B. 7616) which would require utilities to offer 20-year contracts (feed-in tariffs) to small distributed generators. The rates would be established by the PUC and vary by technology type and size of generator. This bill would also require utilities to interconnect small generators ... Read More

On February 25, 2008, a bill (H.B. 5855) was introduced to the state House which would require utilities to offer 20-year contracts (feed-in tariffs) to small distributed generators. The rates would be established by the ICC and vary by technology type and size of generator.

On March 27, 2008, the California Public Utilities Commission held a public workshop to discuss proposals for updating the PUC‚ s Market Price Referent (MPR) methodology, input, and assumptions which will be used in setting the feed-in tariff rates paid by utilities to renewable generators. On February 22, 2008, a bill was introduced to the ... Read More

On March 10, 2008, Whole Foods Market, a purveyor of organic foods, announced that its new store in Glastonbury, Connecticut will generate most of its power from a fuel cell system, supplied by UTC Power. The store is 46,000 square feet, and the fuel cell will provide 50 percent of the store‚ s electricity and ... Read More

On March 12, 2008, Xcel Energy announced the selection of Boulder, Colorado as the nation’s first fully-integrated Smart Grid City. Xcel will lead a consortium of companies‚ Accenture, Current Group, Schweitzer Engineering and others‚ to bring the vision of the future ‚ smart grid‚ to life. The technologies which will be offered include: real-time, two-way ... Read More

On March 11, 2008, Lake Country Power, a Touchstone cooperative utility in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, announced that it has fully deployed its Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system. This cooperative serves 60,000 customers in an area of 10,000 square miles in northern Minnesota. The two-way AMI system was provided by Cooper Power Systems. Mr. Rick Lemonds, ... Read More

On February 28, 2008, Pepco Holdings announced that Itron will provide the meter data management system to support Pepco‚ s deployment of its advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). Pepco is deploying AMI meters across its three operating companies‚ Atlantic City Electric, Delmarva Power, and Pepco‚ a territory with about two million customers in D.C., Maryland, Delaware, ... Read More

On February 23, 2008, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a well-respected energy industry consulting firm, announced the release of its new multi-client study entitled, ‚ Crossing the Divide: the Future of Clean Energy.‚ The announcement states that ‚ high energy prices, climate change, and energy security are converging as the new engine driving the development ... Read More

On March 4, 2008, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, spoke at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC). Among his key points, Mr. Hayward noted that ‚ the scale at which the industry is conducting (renewables) projects today is not going to have much impact on the energy market of the future. For that, ... Read More

On February 21, 2008, Rick Sergel, the president and CEO of the North American Electricity Reliability Council (NERC), delivered the keynote luncheon address at the National Transmission Delivery Forum in Washington, D.C. The following excerpts should be of interest to readers of Connecting to the Grid. Mr. Sergel said, ‚ Today, we are operating the ... Read More