Energy

Spotlight News – Bethlehem plans public hearing to discuss joining energy aggregation program

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Spotlight News – Bethlehem plans public hearing to discuss joining energy aggregation program

A public hearing has been set for the Jan. 8 town board meeting at 6 p.m. where people can comment on how Bethlehem intends to pass a local law authorizing the creation of a Community Choice Aggregation program.

Since October, Bethlehem originally began exploring — but not officially enrolled in it yet — a regional CCA program with Municipal Electric and Gas Alliance, a local corporation that helps the town purchase electricity in bulk from renewable energy resources. Ten other municipalities have also joined to explore the program: the towns of Guilderland, New Scotland, Niskayuna and Knox, the villages of Kinderhook and Voorheesville, and the cities of Glens Falls, Troy, Watervliet and Saratoga Springs.

Bethlehem’s participation in the regional CCA program would only go into effect much later in 2020 if the town decides to officially enroll in the program. Even though Bethlehem is exploring the program now, there is still a chance that the town can ultimately not enroll in it. MEGA also still needs to identify potential suppliers, negotiate pricing, review bids and reconnect with the town government in the months to come.

NPR

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Trump Battles Toilets, Showers, Dishwashers, Lightbulbs In Rally Speech : NPR

Peter Gleick with the Pacific Institute in Oakland considers this all to be Trumpian nostalgia for a time when showers were strong, toilets used 4 gallons a flush and lightbulbs burned your hands when you touched them.

Gleick said these newer household items are part of an "efficiency revolution," doing the same tasks with less and halting the upward trajectory of water and energy consumption in America. And, yes, a dishwasher cycle takes longer, and incandescent bulbs are cheaper to buy upfront.

But in the long run, "They're much more expensive, because they use a huge amount of energy, which we pay for over time and they burn out 20 times faster," Gleick said.

Based on the way Trump talks about efficient lightbulbs, it seems his complaint is with compact fluorescent bulbs, which were the only low-energy bulbs widely available 10 years ago. But today, store shelves are full of LED bulbs with warmer-looking light and even longer life spans. Gleick suspects Trump's toilet complaints are outdated as well, because low-flow toilet technology has come a long way in recent years.

Trump’s most devious coal subsidy yet was just snuck into law – Vox

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Trump’s most devious coal subsidy yet was just snuck into law – Vox

Now, the final piece of the puzzle. A decade ago, worries were raised about utility holding companies, which are both sellers and buyers of capacity, selling artificially cheap capacity into markets in order to drive down prices, from which they would then benefit. To remedy this potential use of buyer-side (monopsony) power, FERC added a tool to its kit: the Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR), which forces resources owned by the holding companies in question to meet at least a certain minimum bid price in capacity markets.

It was meant to be a surgical tool, used in clear cases of buyer-side market manipulation, almost entirely limited to natural gas plants. In 2011, FERC specifically said that renewable resources are not good examples of buyer-side attempts to suppress prices.

This is a good thing for everyone except the owners of those plants. But those gencos, and the utility holding companies that own them, have lots of influence over RTOs and ISOs. And they have been complaining to market administrators that they are being beat in capacity auctions because clean energy has an unfair advantage. Both renewables and nuclear power are subsidized in various ways by state energy policies that, for instance, require utilities to procure a certain amount of their power from renewables. Those policies suppress prices, they argue, and thus subsidized renewables and nuclear ought to be subject to the MOPR.

Some RTOs and ISOs have found this argument convincing and have appealed to FERC to be allowed to apply the MOPR to clean energy resources supported by state policies. Last year, when ISO New England made the request, FERC granted it, and endorsed the broader use of MOPRs: “Absent a showing that a different method would appropriately address particular state policies, we intend to use the MOPR to address the impacts of state policies on the wholesale capacity markets.” (Note here: FERC’s explicit intent is to “address particular state policies.”)

New federal rule will hurt renewables, help gas and coal | Ars Technica

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New federal rule will hurt renewables, help gas and coal | Ars Technica

The story starts with PJM Interconnection, a grid operator responsible for balancing power in a region spanning 13 states, from Illinois to Delaware. PJM runs a capacity market, with annual auctions to secure enough generation to cover peak demand several years into the future. Utilities bid on these contracts based on their cost to provide power.

However, some generators in recent years have complained that they were losing to lower bids from renewables and nuclear in some places, on the basis that those sources can benefit from state subsidies. Renewables only claimed a very small slice of the pie in the last auction, but generators were concerned this would grow.

A mechanism existed in the capacity market design to account for the possibility of artificially low bids—the “minimum offer price rule,” or MOPR. In the case of an artificially low bid, an alternative higher bid would be calculated and used in its stead. The FERC took up the issue of deciding whether all generators subject to a subsidy from states should get the MOPR treatment.

PVEducation

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PVEducation

As solar cell manufacturing continues to grow at a record-setting pace, increasing demands are placed on universities to educate students on both the practical and theoretical aspects of photovoltaics. As a truly interdisciplinary field, young professionals must be fluent with the science, engineering, policy, and market dimensions of this technology, in the context of a growing renewable energy economy.