Advanced Energy Perspectives

California is entering its fifth year of drought and is in the midst of decision-making about the future of the state’s climate goals. California’s water infrastructure represents one of the state’s largest energy users, consuming 19% of the state’s electricity for treating, pumping, and conveyance. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with California’s water use are equal to the emissions from more than 7 million cars. This is what we call the water-energy nexus, and it is the next frontier for California’s climate and energy leadership. Advanced Energy Economy recently provided policymakers with our business-based perspective on it.

This post was originally published on SmartGridNews. Read it in full by clicking here.

The rise in customer-sited distributed generation (DG) and the success of energy efficiency (EE) programs in reducing load growth have brought rate design to the fore as utilities look for ways to ensure cost recovery and reduce risk. The large uptick in fixed charge proposals has continued as a result, but now a new trend toward a more sophisticated rate design has emerged - demand charges. Demand charges, the argument goes, are intended to better align revenue collection with cost and provide a strong incentive for customers to reduce their peak consumption. But do they really make sense for residential customers?

Following the Clean Power Plan has been a waiting game lately. Waiting for court dates, waiting for state planning decisions, waiting to learn what the next President will make of the CPP. We’re excited that the waiting game for the proposed Clean Energy Incentive Program is over (and we’re wasting no time diving in), but we’re also still waiting for the final model trading rules.

That doesn’t mean this time is going to waste. While the CPP winds its way through the courts, analysts of all sorts are frantically crunching numbers and cranking out modeling scenarios to give us all a better picture of what the CPP means for our future electricity system. Spoiler alert: It looks pretty much like the one we’ve got now, just with a lot more advanced energy. Even bigger spoiler: We’re already well on our way to CPP-required levels of emissions.

Solar Impulse 2 takes a nighttime flight over the Statue of Liberty.

Advanced energy moves pretty fast, and this week we’ve got more movement in planes, trains, and automobiles, as well as some interesting storage solutions, plus some really small modular reactors being developed abroad. Phew! Buckle your seatbelts: This week’s news wrap-up could be a bumpy ride.