Reading a book on the electrical code makes me realize how much safer newer homes are compared to older homes. And they’re still making buildings a lot safer with the latest revisions of the code. The safety improvements in the building code are not unlike safety standards in automobile industry – they continue to reduce fires and death from shocks – often in very substantial ways.
Power Plants
the 100% Renewable Fascade – CounterPunch.org
It would be easy to believe that this means a great victory for the planet, that the demise of fossil fuels is incoming, that environmentalism has won and that climate change will soon be a thing of the past. Yet the foul smell emerging from tax-dodging transnationals jumping all together into a bandwagon cannot be ignored.
Despite their claims, none of the companies in the RE100 list is actually going to receive all of its energy from renewable sources. The “100% renewable” label is a fasade, a marketing gimmick used by corporations to pretend they are the good guys while their unfettered thirst for profits continues unopposed. This corporate lie is enabled by the abuse of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) which allow companies to buy their way into “green” without having to change any of their practices.
Yes, I should report some of the high number of street lights out in my neighborhood
Yes, I should report some of the high number of street lights out in my neighborhood… 💡
I’ve noticed lately that there are many street lights out in my neighborhood when I go for my evening walk. In some cases there are whole blocks of sidewalk with the lights out. Reporting street lights out is easy online. I am sure dozens of neighbors have also walked by them and not reported them either.
But National Grid is legally required to send out a crew and repair them, and not only does working street lights improve safety, it also means that town street lighting district tax payers are getting what they pay for – they pay a flat rate for each street light whether or not it is actually on and burning electricity or is burned out and dark.
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
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.
FERC pushes back against state clean energy plans – Houston Chronicle
Is “Community Choice” Electric Supply a Solution or a Problem? – Energy Institute Blog
There is a lot of people in "green" energy business that are essentially just rent seekers, they add no value nor do they make energy greener. A classic example of this the highly hyped "subscribe to a solar farm" business and "community choice aggregation".