Many of the fundamental characteristics of power systems are the same across countries.  Even so, the differences in polices and market designs can be striking.  Although there has been some convergence, the transformations to create electricity markets followed different paths.  Looming challenges have produced similar issues to deal with growing deployment of clean energy.  How can we balance the use of markets and mandates to ensure resource adequacy?  What are the workable methods for grid expansion and integration across national...

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Technological progress and public policy pressures are accelerating decarbonization of electricity supply. Increasingly, states and utilities are announcing 100% renewable, 100% clean or net zero carbon targets and mandates. With intermittent sources as the dominant source of supply, there is concern about the loss of system flexibility. Hence, activating flexible demand could well be key to managing future electricity systems cost-effectively. Flexible demand tends to occur at the distribution level. This in turn creates at least two issues: First, how can load flexibility be...

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Scandal: Are Changes in Markets Increasing Ethical Challenges?

Political scandals such as bribery and influence peddling are nothing...

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The goal of clean or at least net emission free energy systems by a certain date dominates discussion of the policy agenda. The question of feasibility of such an objective, at least for the electricity sector, can be answered easily as a purely technological matter. It is possible. The challenges will include both costs and systemic inertia. The interesting questions have to do with the relative merits of different tools and trajectories. How fast would the transformation occur? What would be deployment of existing technologies versus reliance on research to identify and develop new... Read more about Clean Energy Policy: Tools and Trajectories

Order 2000 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission set the regulatory foundation of today’s organized electricity markets. While policies of wholesale competition drove early interests in markets, the growth of intermittent and potential entrance of distributed resources and associated policy changes are driving market interest in further wholesale market development. Do these changes offer greater incentives to utilities to join RTO’s and/or provide the FERC with greater authority to further incentivize or even compel RTO membership?   While PJM, MISO and SPP saw... Read more about Order 2000 Revisited - FERC Market Expansion and RTO Policy: Where are we now?

 

Reinhart and Rogoff subtitled This Time is Different to describe “Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” and the durability of hope over experience.  Material changes in relative market economics for long-lived assets create the problem of  stranded assets.  Wise investors look ahead to avoid or insure against such losses, but sophisticated investors have been surprised in the past.  For energy, the regulatory compact implies symmetry under cost-based regulation, but the record presents a history of prominent...

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Session One-Cyber Security and Electricity Market Policy: Allies or Antagonists?

Rob Knake, Council on Foreign Relations

Cheryl LaFleur, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Todd Ramey, Midcontinent ISO

Paul Stockton, Sonecon

 

 

Session Two-Can Electricity Markets Meet the Challenge of Meeting Non-Market Objectives?

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Session One-Customer Side of the Meter: What Works? Who Benefits? Who Belongs There

Dale Bryk, Natural Resources Defense Council

Asa Hopkins, Synapse Energy

Arik Levinson, Georgetown University

Raja...

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