Trending Topics – Are Policymakers Driving Blind with Yesterday’s Cost Numbers?

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Policymakers used to operating, planning, regulating and legislating in an environment where capital deployment happens over the course of years and assets maintain their value over the course of decades need to adapt their practices to account for accelerating change and disruptive feedback loops.

Trending Topics—Do Pay-for-Performance Capacity Markets Deliver the Outcomes We Need?

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Capacity markets intend to bridge the gap between revenues available from energy markets and the all-in cost of desired capacity. They offer commitments, still short-term relative to most investment timescales, to make fixed payments for the right to call on an energy resource when needed.

Trending Topics – What can we learn from evolving renewable contracts and grid operations?

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As low-cost renewables provide a growing share of the electricity, grid operations—and thus power markets, financial structures, and policies—must evolve. This article draws lessons from power contracts and markets about the evolving role of renewables from two different organized markets.

Trending Topics – Efficiency: Can we accept less stringent oversight if it means better outcomes?

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Energy efficiency is a big business. However, some are beginning to question whether money could be spent more wisely to achieve greater levels of efficiency. Now is the time for policymakers to take a hard look at how to scale-up energy efficiency cost-effectively.

Trending Topics in Electricity Today: Getting Ready for Distributed Energy Resources

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Ask a distribution grid engineer in Germany or Hawaii how work is going these days, and you’re in for an earful. And policymakers would be smart to listen—while discussions of voltage regulation or “transient stability” can sound overly technical, the truth is that voltage stability in the distribution network is essential to taking advantage of distributed energy resources.

Trending Topics – Will EPA’s Clean Power Plan Really Break the Grid?

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Well-established power groups are drawing different conclusions regarding the feasibility of maintaining grid reliability as states act in order to abide by the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. What’s causing these reliability authorities to reach such different conclusions, and is more analysis needed?

Trending Topics in Electricity Today – New Opportunities for Utilities

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In this month’s “Trending Topics” piece, the experts of America’s Power Plan discuss new opportunities for electric utilities to drive development of distributed energy resources and increase the availability of customer investment opportunities in distributed generation and efficiency.