President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order preparing to block utilities from connecting some foreign-made equipment to the bulk power system, including transformers, batteries, inverters and associated software and digital products. The order also contemplates the replacement of already-installed equipment, allowing the Secretary of Energy to “impose conditions on the continued use, operation,...
Nevada utility regulators cleared the way earlier this month for NV Energy to develop two performance-based credit programs for distributed energy resources that provide energy or capacity services during load flexibility events. Under the Energy Grid Services and Capacity Grid Services riders, customer-sited resources would be eligible to receive payments for dispatched energy based on...
Californians could soon put solar panel kits on balconies and in backyards to lower their electric bills — without utility approval. On Wednesday, state lawmakers passed the Plug and Play Solar Act (Senate Bill 868) to legalize balcony solar, a form of DIY clean energy that’s taken off in Germany. The bill, which garnered bipartisan...
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) has selected 13 new projects across 12 companies for its Nuclear Energy Launch Pad initiative in a significant expansion of the DOE-authorization pathway that channels advanced reactor and fuel-cycle developers toward demonstration on federal and non-federal sites. The selections—spanning microreactor developers, enrichment startups, fuel fabrication...
Microsoft and PowerHouse Hillwood Holding are in disputes over agreements laying out terms and requirements for serving their planned data centers in Wisconsin and Illinois, according to filings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The disagreements come after FERC in mid-June found that grid operators’ rules for interconnecting large loads may be inadequate. In its...
The United States is the world’s largest oil and gas producer, but energy abundance means little if that energy cannot reach the people who need it.
After an earlier reform effort proved ineffective, the PJM Interconnection is taking a second swing at creating a pathway for bringing generation online by using surplus interconnection capacity at existing power facilities. Surplus interconnection service, called SIS, allows a new generator or energy storage system to connect to the grid at a power facility’s existing...
To unlock affordable grid capacity, policymakers should require utilities to consider the best-available line technologies by default, while utilities themselves modernize planning to reinforce their affordability commitment to customers.
Rather than causing disparate groups to come together to recognize the importance of all forms of energy, oil prices have resulted in some pushing harder for oil and gas and others pressing harder for solar, wind and batteries. This is a false dichotomy. Both are needed.
Before instituting sweeping policies that risk creating costs and distortions worse than the supply disruptions and Chinese dependence they aim to solve, Washington needs to weigh the benefits of intervention against its costs.
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