Advanced Energy Perspectives

Discussion of the challenge to the utility business model posed by distributed generation and energy efficiency continues, with a mix of handwringing and saber rattling.

Though it’s been quiet thus far, it is hurricane season, which gave the new report from the White House on power outages from severe weather even more currency than it would have otherwise. The report, a product of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and DOE, is titled “Economic Benefits of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to Weather Outages,” but it’s really about the economic cost of widespread power outages from severe weather events, which have been on the rise over the past decade.

Earlier this month, four former EPA administrators for Republican presidents wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that made what they called the “Republican case for climate action.” Serving under Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and both Presidents Bush, they wrote, “we held fast to common-sense conservative principles — protecting the health of the American people, working with the best technology available and trusting in the innovation of American business and in the market to find the best solutions for the least cost.” Investment in advanced energy, they wrote, is “inarguably the path we must follow to ensure a strong economy along with a livable climate.”

This week Tesla Motors released its Q2 revenue numbers, which, as Greentech Media pointed out, “crushed” the company’s second quarter projections. The company’s Q2 revenue was $405 million, beating out expectations by $22 million and bringing Tesla’s 2013 revenues to $956 million for the year. According to Motor Authority, so far this year Tesla has recorded a net income of $41 million. Share prices of Tesla jumped 14% following the announcement.

This week marked the Department of the Interior’s first offshore wind auction, which raised $3.8 million from awarding leases in the Department’s designated “offshore wind areas,” designed to move development from lease to completion on an expedited basis. Deepwater Wind LLC, based in Providence, RI, won the bid for an area off the RI and Massachusetts coast in what Interior Director of Offshore Energy Tommy Beaudreau called “a very robust and competitive sale.” Jeffrey Grybowski, Deepwater Wind’s CEO, said the site could be generating power as early as 2018.