New technology, particularly in the hands of electric customers, is creating an unprecedented opportunity to tap the many other sources of controllable electricity demand in homes and businesses. Utilities, like Xcel Energy in Minnesota, should harness these lower-cost ways to meet rising peak energy demand.… Read More
Conventional wisdom suggests the biggest wind and solar power plants will be cheapest, but where they deliver power, and who will own them, matters more.… Read More
The first-in-the-nation Clean Energy Partnership has reached the end of its first two-year work plan and has gathered a lot of baseline data. But is it successful? As expected, it’s hard to tell. The first work plan wasn’t adopted until well into the first year of the Partnership (2015), and a lot of existing utility and … Read More
As state regulators restricted the ability of home and business owners in Nevada to receive sufficient compensation for solar on their rooftops, some large companies started looking towards other options. In 2016, at least two major Las Vegas casinos agreed to pay multi-million dollar “exit fees” to leave the service of incumbent monopoly utility NV Energy to … Read More
Where are communities taking charge of their energy future? Which states give communities the most power? ILSR’s newly-released Community Power Map provides an interactive illustration of how communities are accelerating the transition toward 100% renewable energy and how state policies help or hinder greater local action. You can help. If we’re missing a state policy, grassroots energy … Read More
Across the country, utilities are battling their customers over solar, and typically trying to undermine customers that want to cut their energy bills by installing solar arrays. But not all fights end with one side or the other “winning.” In April 2016, New York utilities—already starting down the road to a new market structure under the … Read More
In November 2015, Jon Wellinghoff, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, spoke to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission about the grid of the future. In particular, he addressed the issue of giving customers meaningful choices within a monopoly grid model, present in Minnesota and 34 other states. In the following video, he outlines the … Read More
This article published with the substantial assistance of ILSR intern, McKenna Eckerline. Everyone hates paying for something that they don’t use (how many cable channels do you have?). In California, local electricity customers may finally get satisfaction about paying for the transmission grid capacity that they don’t use. At issue is an obscure pricing mechanism known … Read More
This post made possible by the tireless efforts of ILSR intern Abbigail Feola. She dug up the data, identified the story worth sharing, and wrote the following piece below. Historically, the purpose of both municipal and cooperative utility agencies has been to bring energy services to communities that for-profit corporations thought unprofitable to serve. This philosophy … Read More
