On September 20, the PJM regional grid filed its second informational report with the FERC on Price-Responsive Demand (PRD). That’s the idea that, someday soon, electricity will be sold like other consumer products. Just like gasoline, for example, electricity prices would rise and fall in tune with supply and demand, forcing retail utility customers to think about how much electricity they really need – or even go without – should prices climb too high.

Welcome to the dark side of the smart grid – where America’s consumers could well come face to face with the mother of all rate shocks. Read more »

Posted: October 6th, 2010 under Dynamic Pricing, Energy Price, Price-Responsive Demand, Smart Grid.
Comments: 1

The all-day conference held this week at FERC on how to compensate demand response resources in wholesale power markets proceeded more or less as expected, as the witnesses took sides along the lines set out in the prior post, The Nutty Professors: Bill, Fred and the Strange Case of Demand Response.

But the salon erupted in fireworks during the very last five minutes, treating this reporter and others still on hand in the FERC meeting room to an unrehearsed and quite emotional give-and-take between commission chairman Jon Wellinghoff and senior commissioner Philip Moeller – highlighting a rift among FERC’s leaders on how best to move forward with the vision known as the Smart Grid. Read more »

Posted: September 16th, 2010 under Demand Response, Electric Utility Regulation, Energy Markets, Energy Price, FERC, Smart Grid.
Comments: none

Imagine walking into a new Honda showroom and telling the salesman that you won’t be buying that new model this year, as you often do.

And by the way, before you kick the tires one last time and stroll out the door, you ask if the dealer would be so kind as to write you a check for the full sticker price of a brand-new Accord, fully loaded, since, by resisting the urge to buy, and making do with your tired old vehicle for one more year, you have made sure that the dealership now will have one more car in its inventory than it otherwise would — a benefit for the dealer every bit as tangible as if the factory had shipped one extra car for free to the showroom floor.

Sound nutty? Well, on Monday, September 13, the FERC Staff will hold a conference to debate this very idea – applied not to new model cars, but to wholesale electricity. (Notice of Technical Conference, FERC Docket RM10-17.)

Read more »

Posted: September 10th, 2010 under Conservation, Demand Response, Electric Utility Regulation, Energy Efficiency, Energy Markets, FERC, ISOs, LMPs, Locational Marginal Prices, RTOs, Ratepayer Benefits, Smart Grid.
Comments: 2