News & Blog

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…

In engineering, as in life, we all have moments when something that is troubling us suddenly crystallizes, the fog lifts to reveal an insight. So it was after several months of grappling with issues in the Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) market when I started to examine events in detail and study the performance of…