News & Blog

Growing penetrations of distributed solar under net energy metering (NEM) have spurred debate, and in some cases, changes to how distributed solar will be compensated in the future. Perhaps just as importantly, these debates have highlighted the need for rate reform more generally. In an age when airline prices can motivate you to spend the…

There’s probably a hundred things to get “right” when performing simulations of VG integration. From transmission to reserve requirements to high-quality, spatially diverse VG profiles, each element of an integration study can radically impact estimates of curtailment and other important performance metrics. One key parameter for a good integration study is the minimum generation level…

So why is bulk solar PV different?  Should it be? I think many of us who have been attending UVIG meetings over the past ten or fifteen years were surprised by the explosion of solar PV in the US and around the world.  We shouldn’t have been, in my opinion, as we had front row…

UVIG might seem an odd outlet for a blog post on retail electricity pricing. But the growing disconnect between retail and wholesale prices has important implications for where we get our renewable power from in the future. Germany’s residential customers and my son in Southern California Edison’s service territory face the same marginal retail rate…

The electric utility industry is undergoing a transformation from the traditional utility model (operating large base load power stations and supplying electricity to a captive customer base) to one that faces challenges due to increasing customer choice, cheap natural gas, falling prices for renewables and energy storage, and the need for grid resiliency to withstand…

Many of us have been having a lot of fun thinking about what it will really take to move to a 100% renewable power system. “100% renewable” means one thing when considering reliably running the grid, and something rather different when contemplating altering one’s carbon footprint and other societal outcomes. In discussion of the latter:…

Utilities are faced with making decisions on how to consider this growing penetration of distributed energy resources (DER). The result is a new set of challenges for planning and operating the grid, especially on the distribution system that serves these new resources. With this change in mind, utilities across the country are beginning to look…

Hawaii continues to be a hotbed of solar activity with high penetrations of distributed, customer-sited installations.  As in California and Arizona, Hawaiian utilities are already contending with some of the highest levels of distributed generation in the nation with over 17% of utility customers with installed or approved  PV systems.  Further renewable momentum and PV…

Wind and solar currently dominate the global growth of renewable electricity production. In 2015, the combined share of investments between these two technologies comprised 90% of global renewable energy (excluding large hydro resources) investment of nearly US $286 billion. At the same time, various jurisdictions around the world have pledged to significantly reduce greenhouse gas…

The success of Henry Ford’s Model T, starting production in 1908, is attributed to many innovations by automotive historians and experts. Many claim that his use of an assembly line or paying workers an efficiency wage were the keystones of the Ford Motor Company’s rapid growth and prosperity. A view less often heard comes from…