Are Vertically Integrated Utilities and/or Regulators Worried?

The EWPC article Let’s Avoid Many Expensive Fiascos seems to have worried vertically integrated utilies and/or regulators as it became delete target attack today.

The energy stories Managing Energy and Solar Boom , and the energy blog posts Huge Solar Power Farms, on the M.I.T. Technology Review digital magazine, have been updated today after a reply to an earlier posts vanished. It is interesting that my total posts shows 48, while when I edit there are only 45. I hope that a back up could reinstate them soon. The three earlier posts are below the following update, which I will be expecting no to be erased.


Aug 29, 2008. A comment to update this post was deleted today. The key insight is in the link to the EWPC article Let’s Avoid Many Expensive Fiascos which shows the power utilities price control business models are in a dead end and that regulators are making excessive risks that will go into customers' pockets as soon as the new investments go into infant mortality or premature obsolescence. The articles’ summary reads: There is no need to cite any evidence “to enable a highly competitive, pro-consumer, complete and fully functional market architecture and design paradigm shift.” What is needed is to have “the global power industry … get out of the wrong jungle to produce a EWPC based EPAct as soon as possible.” Three key references is the EWPC article are Warren Causey’s article Utilities Full Speed Ahead on IUE/SG: The Question is What to do First, the EWPC article Utilities and Regulators’ Value Destruction, and the EWPC article Leadership Answers What to do First.

Small is Beautiful on the post Huge Solar Power Farms
javs on 08/19/2008 at 11:16 PM

Kevin,

The world does not need huge solar power farms.

Readers should take an unbiased look at the Small Is Beautiful essays collection.

The reason behind huge supply side solar power is simple: extending the useful life of the price control business model of winning rate cases to the regulator.

Yes! Solar power is distributed but to make it beautiful, the government needs to get out of the electricity business of negotiating prices in the name of the end customers. In a sense, what is needed is an Electricity Without Price Controls (EWPC) market architecture and design paradigm shift to enabled a new Energy Policy Act (EPAct). That EPAct will then allow business model innovations to emerge in an open market, under prudential regulations to protect the end customers. Unlike deregulation, EWPC keeps a controlled transportation market with a responsibility to transport.

For more details take a look at the EWPC articles Can the Power Industry Eliminate its Price Controls to the End Customer? and Nanosolar Breakthrough and the Old Paradigm (that is bound to be beautiful among many other demand side energy resources).

Demand Side Barrier on the energy story Managing Energy
javs on 08/21/2008 at 11:41 AM

There is a need to open the demand side of the power industry to enable the development of the recourses of the demand side. The smart grid should remain a closed market that guarantees a responsibility to transport instead of a responsibility to serve. To open the demand side means obliterating the obsolete business model of winning rate cases to the regulator and enabling business model innovations under competition in the retail market.

Aug 29, 2008. A comment to update this post was deleted today. The key insight is in the link to the EWPC article Let’s Avoid Many Expensive Fiascos which shows the power utilities price control business models are in a dead end and that regulators are making excessive risks that will go into customers' pockets as soon as the new investments go into infant mortality or premature obsolescence. The articles’ summary reads:

There is no need to cite any evidence “to enable a highly competitive, pro-consumer, complete and fully functional market architecture and design paradigm shift.” What is needed is to have “the global power industry … get out of the wrong jungle to produce a EWPC based EPAct as soon as possible.”

Three key references is the EWPC article are Warren Causey’s article Utilities Full Speed Ahead on IUE/SG: The Question is What to do First, the EWPC article Utilities and Regulators’ Value Destruction, and the EWPC article Leadership Answers What to do First.

Country Side Grid Enabled Solar Panels on the energy story Solar Boom
javs on 08/23/2008 at 4:50 PM

Distributed solar generation that take more space but is a lot cheaper can be integrated to the country side improving the lives of many poor people if at the same time the grid offers commercial quality electricity to integrate excess output and coordinate the large savings resulting at fair prices. That is an essential element of adding the market of the Bottom of the Pyramid that has close by electrification. The EWPC article Nanosolar Breakthrough and the Old Paradigm starts by saying that "nanosolar has made great progress as it has faced and apparently surpassed many barriers so far. However, they are still facing the most important barrier, which is the old electric power paradigm centered on central generating station..." All three technologies face the same barrier in rural and also in urban areas.

Aug 29, 2008. A comment to update this post was deleted today. The key insight is in the link to the EWPC article Let’s Avoid Many Expensive Fiascos which shows the power utilities price control business models are in a dead end and that regulators are making excessive risks that will go into customers' pockets as soon as the new investments go into infant mortality or premature obsolescence. The articles’ summary reads:

There is no need to cite any evidence “to enable a highly competitive, pro-consumer, complete and fully functional market architecture and design paradigm shift.” What is needed is to have “the global power industry … get out of the wrong jungle to produce a EWPC based EPAct as soon as possible.”

Three key references is the EWPC article are Warren Causey’s article Utilities Full Speed Ahead on IUE/SG: The Question is What to do First, the EWPC article Utilities and Regulators’ Value Destruction, and the EWPC article Leadership Answers What to do First.