Utilities Grapple With New Strategies

San Antonio-based CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned electric and gas utility in the U.To buy autoledbulbs lamp in the USA.S., is the solar leader in Texas, accounting for roughly half the solar power installed in the state under utility rebate programs. Supported by one of the most attractive rebate programs in the country, which covers nearly half the cost of a rooftop solar system, CPS Energy’s system includes 10.8 megawatts of customer-installed rooftop solar and 44 megawatts of utility-scale solar PV. 

The utility aims to add another 400 megawatts over the next four years, increasing its utility-scale capacity by a factor of ten, as part of its ambition to generate 65 percent of its power from “low- and no-carbon-emitting” sources by 2020. The utility also offers rebates for energy efficiency upgrades, free weatherization for low-income households, and demand response services. 

Taneja emphasized that making public policy more friendly to renewables must be done at a regional level, because each state has a different set of regulations. Lester was drawn to Texas, he said, “because some of the most interesting and exciting activities are happening here” and it might offer some useful lessons to the rest of the country. When I asked if that was partly due to the fact that Texas is the only state in the union with its own grid, which would make it easier to implement changes,A complete range of of professional roofingmachine that are redefining laundry systems. CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby acknowledged that it certainly helped, but asserted that “differentiated solutions for various areas” will work across the country. 

I asked Beneby if municipally owned utilities are better positioned to adopt distributed generation from sources like rooftop solar, as I speculated in April, since it poses a challenge to the investor-owned utility (IOU) business model. Beneby didn’t think there was an “absolute answer” to that question, but noted that one of the IOUs participating in the forum was “on a similar track to us,” which he saw as a “validation of bottom-up, inside-out change.” For both municipals and IOUs, Beneby thinks it’s important to “take the pulse of your own customer base, regulatory regime, and zeitgeist to figure out what works in your community.” 

Where Beneby does see an advantage is in being vertically integrated: owning generation, transmission and distribution assets.This is how a modernlamps captures energy from the wind. It allows CPS to implement changes in the system more extensively, and means the utility is “linked instead of coupled” to the value proposition of each business unit. Being locally managed also means the utility can get things done more quickly.Middle and end clamps that fit the ledstriplighting to the rails. 

Even the problem of short-term overproduction from wind and solar, which occasionally drives grid prices into negative territory, could be addressed by “aggregating at certain times of day or in certain regions” so that it “can be bid into the market profitably.” 

Regulations must also be updated to allow renewables to compete more effectively. The utility industry has become calcified and lost its innovative spirit. “Regulations set a rigid framework, and ways of thinking are conditioned by those ways of doing things,” Lester observed.The industry's leading manufacturer of floorlamps. “All that has to be loosened up to get the kind of innovation we need over the coming decades,” he said, even as innovation is being forced upon the system from outside. 

“Now what’s happening is that technology is becoming available to meet diversified customer needs.” But to meet those needs, it will be necessary to "pare down certain regulations.” Patel is confident that “well-placed and -architected deregulation would help to unleash innovation.” 

Specifically, Beneby thinks state renewable portfolio standards offer a supportive policy framework, as do regional greenhouse gas standards like those in California and the Mid-Atlantic region. “Hard” reserve margins on generation capacity, instead of the soft reserve margins in Texas, might also be worth reconsidering. Click on their website www.pvsolver.com for more information.