Tag: utility regulation

Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #36 – Scott Burger

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This week’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode features David Spence interviewing MIT’s Scott Burger about his research on “How to Value Distributed Energy Resources.”

David and Scott discuss the problems that can arise if rooftop solar is overcompensated through net metering when rooftop solar is mostly installed by wealthier customers. Scott and his colleagues “simulated rooftop solar adoption across single family homes [in] the Chicago, Illinois area” and found that bills dropped for rooftop solar adopters and rose for those who didn’t adopt. This tended to increase costs for low-income consumers “[b]ecause adopters are (on average) wealthier than non-adopters.”

The discussion builds on one of Scott’s recent articles: “Why Distributed? A Critical Review of the Tradeoffs Between Centralized and Decentralized Resources,” which was published last year.

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Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #34 – Michael Wara, Part I

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This Thursday’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast features Stanford University’s Michael Wara talking with David Spence about his research on California’s wildfire policies. This week’s podcast episode is the first part of a two-part series on “PG&E’s Wildfire Liability and Bankruptcy: Who Pays?”

This episode focused on wildfire causes, liability, and victims. David and Michael talk about why Northern California has been so vulnerable to fires in recent years, including how fire prevention practices have differed from those in Southern California. They also discuss why utilities have been shutting off power to avoid fires and how customers have responded to the risk that their power supply will be cut off.

Michael appears frequently in the media as an expert on PG&E, wildfires, and liability. Just last week he released a new NBER working paper on “The Changing Risk and Burden of Wildfire in the US.” If you’d like more background on wildfire law and policy, I can recommend two articles by Karen Bradshaw of Arizona State: a 2010 piece titled “A Modern Overview of Wildfire Law” and a 2015 piece on stakeholder collaborations in wildfire policy.

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Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #13 – Eisen & Welton

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In this week’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast interview, the University of Richmond’s Joel Eisen and the University of South Carolina’s Shelley Welton talk with David Spence about their research on “Net Metering & the Value of Distributed Solar Generation.”

David, Joel, and Shelley discuss hot-button questions about net-metering, which effectively pays homeowners with rooftop solar the retail price for the electricity that they provide to the grid. This price is higher than that received by other power generators. Net metering offers environmental benefits but imposes costs on other electricity users. David kicks off the discussion by addressing the common question whether net-metering is regressive and segues into a discussion of the broad array of studies on the effects of net metering.

The interview builds on Joel & Shelley’s just-published article in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, which is titled “Clean Energy Justice: Charting an Emerging Agenda.”

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Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #12 – Amy Stein

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Another week, another EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode. This week, the University of Florida’s Amy Stein talks with David Spence about her research on “Maintaining Reliability in a Distributed Energy World.”

Amy and David explore the challenges of maintaining power grid reliability when an increasing amount of electricity is produced by distributed sources such as rooftop solar. Amy explains how energy storage and demand response can provide this reliability. And she describes how these “reliability resources” may be a poor fit with historical methods of utility investment and regulation.

The interview builds on Amy’s 2016 article on “Distributed Reliability,” which was published in the University of Colorado Law Review.

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