Advanced Energy United Webinars

The blackouts resulting from the record freeze in Texas are driving regulators and lawmakers in Texas and around the country to search for answers:

How can we keep the lights on when severe weather strikes?

New talk of clean energy investment to stimulate a COVID-heavy economy. A new chairman at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission facing tension between states and wholesale markets and worries about transmission. A Biden Administration determined to take action on climate, with advanced energy technologies as critical tools.

With construction of a Tesla factory outside Austin underway, Texas is guaranteed a central place in the transition to electric transportation. But it turns out there are already 7,000 Texans working in electric transportation-related business, and more than 400,000 workers and 5,000 Texas companies are in “adjacent” industries and occupations that stand to grow as transportation in the United States goes electric. 

COVID-19 may have made 2020 annus horribilis, but the public health crisis was only part of the story of advanced energy this year. The pandemic took its toll on the industry – and forced adjustments in business and regulation – but underlying trends in markets and technology continued to favor advanced energy.

In its landmark Order No. 2222, FERC requires all Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators (RTOs/ISOs) to remove barriers to wholesale market participation by aggregated distributed energy resources (DERs). This means that DERs – including distributed solar, energy storage, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, demand response, and more – will be able to bid into wholesale energy, ancillary services, and capacity markets according to their technical capabilities.