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Popular Media Last week’s outages in Houston due to Hurricane Beryl were agonizing and frustrating. The Category 1 hurricane made landfall on July 8 and maintained hurricane . . .
Last week’s outages in Houston due to Hurricane Beryl were agonizing and frustrating. The Category 1 hurricane made landfall on July 8 and maintained hurricane strength until it reached Houston, delivering 10-15 inches of rain in some areas and resulting in 2.7 million power outages in the region. Four days later, over one million customers were still without power. Today, nine days after the storm hit Houston, 40,000 customers still don’t have power.
Read the full piece here.
Popular Media Growing data center energy use continues to make headlines. In my first post on data center electricity use, I focused on the technologies that make . . .
Growing data center energy use continues to make headlines. In my first post on data center electricity use, I focused on the technologies that make AI possible and on broad trends in data center investment and electricity demand forecasts out to 2028.
Popular Media From big-box and grocery stores to airlines, “dynamic pricing” — where prices fluctuate in real-time based on supply and demand — is poised to become a larger part . . .
From big-box and grocery stores to airlines, “dynamic pricing” — where prices fluctuate in real-time based on supply and demand — is poised to become a larger part of the American shopping experience.
Scholarship Abstract Bansal et al.’s Point piece, “Strategy’s Ecological Fallacy: How strategy scholars have contributed to the ecological crisis and what we can do about it,” . . .
Bansal et al.’s Point piece, “Strategy’s Ecological Fallacy: How strategy scholars have contributed to the ecological crisis and what we can do about it,” calls for reforming the strategy field to focus on the natural environment, ecological cycles, and interconnections across natural and social levels, in service of value creation for ‘a defined ecosystem that comprises respect for the natural environment’. We doubt that such new foundations are necessary or useful. We argue that Bansal et al. misconstrue the evolution and content of strategy thinking; downplay the usefulness of existing tools for dealing with their issues of concern; overlook problems of measurement, collective action, government failure, and cronyism encouraged by their preferred policies; embrace an unnecessarily alarmist worldview; and underappreciate the social benefits of the market-based institutions they criticize. We suggest instead that a market system based on clearly delineated property rights, prices that freely adjust to reflect scarcities, and an institutional environment that encourages entrepreneurship and innovation remains an underappreciated instrument for protection of the natural environment, one that is superior to centralized and regulatory alternatives.
Popular Media The impetus for change in monopoly electric systems has ebbed and flowed for over three decades. Over the past 15 years the interest in and . . .
The impetus for change in monopoly electric systems has ebbed and flowed for over three decades. Over the past 15 years the interest in and ability to update electricity system technologies has grown, due to the combination of changing policy objectives and widespread digital innovation. Whether you call it smart grid or grid modernization, digital technologies by now have long had the potential to transform electric systems, improving their operations, reducing waste and idleness, and (but I repeat myself) having more market-based systems. Separate but complementary improvements in the performance and production costs of distributed energy resources like solar PV, electric vehicles, and battery storage, along with the policy focus on decarbonization, have amplified interest in and work on digitalization. Digitalization has reduced transaction costs and created unforeseeable types and amounts of value in the rest of the economy. Shouldn’t it do so too in electricity?
Scholarship Abstract The substantial technological change taking place in the electricity industry differs qualitatively from the past century’s technology history – decentralized, decarbonized, and digital – . . .
The substantial technological change taking place in the electricity industry differs qualitatively from the past century’s technology history – decentralized, decarbonized, and digital – and policy objectives facing regulators have expanded to prioritize decarbonization. But electricity industry and regulators have a pacing problem, with rates of technological change far outstripping the slow pace of institutional change. The institutional challenges of implementing such changes in a rate-of-return regulated industry are formidable because these new technologies are so different in their features, capabilities, and system implications. This paper uses the Ostrom Workshop Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to conduct a mapping exercise of utility regulation in the presence of a technology shock. The mapping exercise constructs a conceptual “ideal type” stylized model of the 20th century combination of large-scale electro-mechanical technologies with public utility rate-of-return regulation, with the IAD framework as the structure of the model, and then compares that combination with a stylized model representing the DER and digital technologies and their capabilities. The stylized “technology shock” model is based on transactive energy, which connects energy devices to a local energy market, enables them to submit bids based on owner preferences, and automates device settings in response to market prices to enable decentralized coordination of supply and demand.
TOTM Our latest guest in Truth on the Market’s “Global Voices Forum” series is Professor Allan Fels, AO, of the University of Melbourne Law School. Allan is . . .
Our latest guest in Truth on the Market’s “Global Voices Forum” series is Professor Allan Fels, AO, of the University of Melbourne Law School. Allan is the retired foundation dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Perhaps more famously, he was the chair of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) from its inception in 1995 until June 2003.
Scholarship Abstract This Perspective applies a multidimensional, whole-systems energy justice lens to the electrical power grid, conceived of as the national electricity transmission and distribution network . . .
This Perspective applies a multidimensional, whole-systems energy justice lens to the electrical power grid, conceived of as the national electricity transmission and distribution network in the United States. The electrical power grid exists primarily to provide reliable and safe energy services to anyone and everyone, and at any time of the day. It represents a massive system of physical infrastructure that most scholars treat as agnostic and inherently void of equity dimensions. But underlying the poles and wires are a complicated set of challenges that have equity implications. For example, better power lines are installed in wealthier neighborhoods; lower-income neighborhoods experience blackouts significantly more often than higher-income neighborhoods; and the siting of transmission infrastructure infringes on local communities and ecosystems. In this Perspective, we discuss the philosophical underpinnings of justice and equity, define energy justice, and discuss how the grid can cause and perpetuate four different types of inequity: demographic within social groups and communities, spatial across urban and rural locations, temporal across time, and interspecies in terms of damaging the environment. We chart these four dimensions with twelve distinct examples and provide recommendations to create a more equitable and just future grid.
Popular Media In March 2023 I wrote a post reiterating my argument that grid reliability is not a public good, at least not according to the technical . . .
In March 2023 I wrote a post reiterating my argument that grid reliability is not a public good, at least not according to the technical definition of a public good as nonexcludable and nonrival. Instead I argued that grid reliability is a common-pool resource, potentially somewhat excludable or at least differentiable, and if not nonrival at least congestible. Given recent discussions in electricity policy about reliability in general and winter reliability in particular, I think it’s worth reconsidering now.
