Advanced Energy Perspectives

Indiana AEE hosted an ‘Energy 101’ legislative briefing and breakfast January 8 to introduce AEE and advanced energy policy issues to legislators. The audience was newly elected legislators and members of the House and Senate Utility committees. Legislators heard from Claudia Earls, Chief Counsel, Northern Indiana Public Service Co. (NIPSCO), on the utility’s recent IRP and announcement of plans to close its last two coal plants in the next 10 years, replacing that capacity with solar, wind, storage, and demand management resources.

Photo by Tom Burke, used under a Creative Commons license. 

In July, we published a list of the top 10 utility regulation trends of 2018 – so far. With 2018 winding down, we check in on the top public utility commission (PUC) actions and trends of the year. Ten prominent trends and actions stand out above the rest, from renewables continuing their downward price trajectory, to electric vehicle charging infrastructure build-outs getting approved, to exploration of utility business model reforms and non-wires alternatives to traditional distribution investments. Here is the full round-up of the top 10 matters before PUCs in 2018.

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This is a guest post by Matt Golden, CEO of AEE member company OpenEE.

Energy efficiency in California is rapidly evolving. Moving toward the state’s 50% renewable portfolio standard (RPS), SB350 goals to double energy efficiency and renewable energy, and perhaps most importantly, new SB100 requirements to achieve zero carbon on the grid by 2045, it has become necessary to rethink our demand-side strategy. Achieving these lofty targets while maintaining a balanced, stable, and affordable grid will take all the distributed energy resources we can get, including a massive increase in demand flexibility from energy efficiency, electrification, and controls. 

New solicitations for energy efficiency services from California’s investor-owned utilities point the way toward a future of performance-based capture of energy savings when and where they matter, driven by innovation in the marketplace. Energy efficiency providers should see this as an opportunity – and there’s no time to waste. 

Photo by Drew Buikema, used under a Creative Commons license. 

Back in December 2016, an omnibus energy bill signed into law in Michigan contained a small section requiring utilities to develop “voluntary green pricing” programs. Today, nearly two years later, the ensuing regulatory process is producing results that will open new renewable energy options for residential as well as commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. The Michigan Public Service Commission recently issued orders requiring improvements to Consumers Energy’s “Large Customer Renewable Energy Program” (LC-REP) and Solar Gardens program, and to DTE’s MIGreenPower program, while also requiring DTE to introduce a new program focused on C&I customers. The regulatory process is far from complete, but before long corporate customers in Michigan will have more and better ways to procure the renewable energy they want to power their operations.

We knew this time was coming, but now it’s here: Call it the crossover point, when technologies like large-scale wind and solar come so far down the cost curve that they become cheaper than legacy sources of electric power generation. Cheaper than the old alternatives, in terms of making new investments. Cheaper, even, than keeping old power plants going, in some cases. And that time is now. You can see it in the latest estimates of lifetime costs of electricity from new power sources made by investment bank Lazard, and you can see it in the latest purchases of renewable power by utilities. Any way you look at it, advanced energy is winning.