Advanced Energy Perspectives

This guest post is provided by AEE Member company Recargo, which hosted an AEE webinar on policies for advancing plug-in car technology.

Electric vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions, are more energy efficient, and deliver a better driving experience than gasoline-fueled vehicles. But the value of an electric vehicle goes well beyond the parking lot or freeway: the battery packs that enable an electric vehicle’s range can also be a huge resource for our electricity grid.

This has been a week of big deals. In the potentially biggest, Alstom announced that its board “has unanimously endorsed General Electric’s offer” of $13.5 billion to take over the company, according to Patrick Kron, Alstom’s chairman and CEO. GE is looking to take over the French company’s thermal power, renewables, and electrical grid components. If it goes through, the deal would be the biggest in GE’s history, and could add as much as $10 billion to the company’s revenue, according to GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt. It’s a big move, but GE, an AEE Member company, is no stranger to advanced energy. “We would not have contemplated it without a certain amount of confidence that we knew the territory,” Immelt said.

The acquisition would be controversial, especially in Europe. Siemens, which is based in Germany, is also making a bid to gain control of the Alstom’s energy business in exchange for Siemens’s transportation market share. Although the Siemens proposal is less developed, France’s economy minister “demanded” that Alstom consider it as well. We will keep an eye on this story as it develops.

Last week, New York State launched a new “energy modernization” initiative, complete with a regulatory proceeding that could greatly expand opportunities for advanced energy companies. AEE has already contributed to that effort, by facilitating an Energy Industry Working Group that has outlined a path toward a 21^st century electricity system in New York – the first time, to our knowledge, that a report proposing changes to utility business model and regulatory frameworks has been produced with the involvement and support of both advanced energy companies and a state’s major electric utilities, including Central Hudson, Consolidated Edison Co. of NY and Orange & Rockland Utilities, Iberdrola USA, National Grid USA, New York Power Authority, and PSEG Long Island.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released its latest “Energy Infrastructure Update” last week, announcing that 100 percent of new electricity generation in the U.S. installed in the first quarter of 2014 came from advanced energy sources. Of the 1,150 MW of new domestic power sources, 584 MW came from new solar installations, 427 MW of new wind generation, 45 MW from a new natural gas unit, and the remaining from geothermal, biomass, and hydropower sources.

While Congress has been in recess, the White House, Department of Energy (DOE), and Department of Defense (DoD) all announced new initiatives embracing advanced energy.