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RAP experts keep their finger on the pulse of the energy sector and provide timely analysis of topics impacting stakeholders TODAY.
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Rate Adjustment Clauses: A Hidden Utility Business Model Problem
Rate adjustment clauses, which practitioners also call trackers or riders, are a mechanism that lets utilities reflect changes in their costs in rates between rate cases. These rate mechanisms have proliferated over the last several decades. Utility ratemaking structures… View Summary +
Past Due: Modernizing the Regulatory Framework for Residential Collections
Millions of Americans struggle to afford their power bills. In 2024, 13.4 million residential electric customer disconnections occurred, and 27.1 million final disconnection notices were issued to residential natural gas customers, numbers that significantly exceed… View Summary +
Going Off Grid: The False Panacea of Islanding High-Impact Loads
Technology companies are racing to build a new wave of power-hungry data centers, some drawing as much energy as an entire city. Utility commissions and stakeholders across the country are debating whether the grid can handle them. But while… View Summary +
A Tale of Three Storms
Last month, I stayed up all night through the most intense rainfall I’ve seen in my life. I was monitoring the flooding at our home and anticipating how to get through the next few days without power again. I’ve… View Summary +
Remembering the 28th of April: What You Think You Know About the Iberian Blackout is Probably Wrong
One year ago, shortly after noon on a mild spring day across the Iberian Peninsula, the electric grid collapsed. There were no dramatic satellite photos of a black void in a sea of light since grid service had been… View Summary +
“No One-Size-Fits-All Solutions”: Evolving Reliability Standards Will Require Flexibility and Collaboration
Electricity reliability has long been measured by a simple question: is there enough generation capacity available to meet peak demand? But as the power system changes, reliability challenges are becoming more complex, requiring new ways of thinking about how… View Summary +
U.S. Utility Regulation: Balancing State and Federal Power
Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Energy has exercised emergency authority to force the continued operation of retiring fossil fuel plants across multiple states, including two in my home state of Indiana, citing reliability concerns. But these federal orders override state-level decisions that were reached through rigorous, multi-year, data-driven planning processes involving utilities, regional grid operators, regulators,… View Summary +
Hybrid financing can help build efficient interstate electricity highways
As some Americans suffered through power outages and high electricity prices during Winter Storm Fern, other regions were curtailing power that costs nearly nothing to produce. Wholesale real-time electricity prices from January 25, 2026. Source: Grid Status Nodal Price… View Summary +
