Tag Archives: reliability

Trump’s Coal Obsession
 To Force Perry, GOP
 To Abandon Free Market

So, it has come to this—Rick Perry, the man who seven years ago couldn’t remember that the Energy Department was one of the government agencies he wanted to eliminate is now essentially going to be entrusted with running the nation’s electricity grid as secretary of the very same department for the next two years.

Or, at least that is the indication from the latest memo (which can be found here) circulating around Washington in the Trump administration’s never-ending effort to rewrite the rules of capitalism, that wonderful free market enterprise the GOP has so often defended in years past. Democrats have frequently been at the receiving end of GOP barbs about the free market, with Republicans warning anyone listening that they were the only thing standing between the country and, that’s right, socialism. See Secretary Perry’s particularly relevant quote below about President Obama from 2012. Oh my, how things have changed.

I think Barack Obama is a socialist. I think he cares for his country – don’t get me wrong about that – but I think he truly misunderstands what this country was based upon, the values that America was based upon, which was free enterprise and having the ability to risk your capital and having a chance to have a return on your investment.

–Rick Perry

Anyway, the general GOP defense of the free market used to run something like this: When cheaper, better products come along, incumbent industries get hurt, some survive and evolve while others go out of business. It’s messy, but that’s what makes America great.

Well, that exact messy transition is under way now in the electric power industry, and not even a two-year grid nationalization, for that in effect is what is being considered, is going to stop it.

Renewable energy is getting cheaper almost by the day and, coupled with storage, offers the much ballyhooed “baseload” power that seems to appeal to Trump and his tag-alongs. At the same time, the administration’s own energy dominance agenda ensures that natural gas will be in plentiful supply and remain low in cost for all the existing and planned new natural gas-fired generating facilities across the country. Those facts can’t be wished away by half truths about resilience and reliability.

Continue reading Trump’s Coal Obsession
 To Force Perry, GOP
 To Abandon Free Market

Reliability Is Key Issue
 For Electric Utilities
 In Changing Market

 It’s not always about dollars and cents.

In a recent article in Utility Dive (the full piece can be found here), Tucson Electric Power’s Carmine Tilghman made a big deal about the unfavorable economics of Tesla’s current 7 kilowatt-hour Powerwall battery option, which he said would cost consumers $7,000 installed. As quoted by Utility Dive, Tilghman said: “At the average all-in electricity rate of $0.12 per kwh, the buyer saves $0.84 per day. And $7,000 divided by $0.84 per day means it will take 8,333 days or about 22.9 years to get the initial investment back for a battery that comes with a ten year warranty.”

Regardless of whether Tesla’s Powerwall actually ends up costing $7,000 installed, utility executives are kidding themselves if they think it is only about dollars and cents. Economics are important, to be sure, but reliability is, as a popular current commercial concludes, priceless.

tesla-powerwall-battery-specs-01.jpg.650x0_q70_crop-smart

Just this week I would have paid just about anything to have had Tesla’s battery backup (or anybody else’s for that matter) installed on the wall in my garage. Construction on a new house two down from mine necessitated the installation of a new power transformer on our street. Dominion, my provider, duly showed up, knocked the power off on my block for an hour and hooked up the new equipment. No harm, really, except that since I work out of my home that was 60 minutes of essentially wasted time.

Unfortunately, that was not the only time I wasted day. Later in the evening when I went to turn on the TV (I pay for a bundled internet/phone/TV package through Verizon) nothing happened. The menu info showed up at the bottom telling me that I was watching the Washington Nationals play the first of three games against the Cincinnati Reds—but there was no video, just a blank black screen.

An hour and a half later after the Verizon FIOS tech support guy had had me reboot, disconnect/reconnect, unplug and plug in every cable box in my house (This is standard fare for virtually all customer support these days—when a piece of electronics does not work you are almost always told to turn it off and then back on. For mystical reasons unclear to everyone, that often does the trick.) he finally agreed that I might actually need a real technician to come examine my problem.

Of course, since there seem to be only five of them in Verizon’s entire Washington, DC service territory, the earliest appointment was three days off—so much for watching any of the Nationals/Reds games. And even then, I have no guarantee that the problem, whatever it is, will be fixed.

However, if I had a battery backup installed at my house, none of this would have happened. Dominion would have turned off the power on my block, my battery would have kicked into operation, the power surge that apparently killed my FIOS video feed never would have occurred and I likely would not even have known that the power company was working just two houses away.

Now that truly would have been priceless.

–Dennis Wamsted

 

Electric Utilities
 Need New Approach
 To Customer Needs

No disrespect to GE, but how can it possibly be news that millions of Americans are willing to pay a little extra for more reliable electric service? That was, in fact, the headline on its press release last week touting the results of a recent consumer survey done for GE Digital Energy by the Harris Poll–Millions of Americans Willing to Pay $10 More on Monthly Bill for Reliable Grid.

Of course Americans are willing to pay for more reliable residential service, just ask the millions who work from home, either part-time or full-time. Going to the neighborhood coffee shop for its free wi-fi really isn’t the same as working out of your home office—trust me, I know.
Continue reading Electric Utilities
 Need New Approach
 To Customer Needs