Since 2010, China has announced a series of increasingly comprehensive and stringent measures to improve air quality, including the landmark Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013–2017) issued by the State Council in September 2013. These include requirements for regional air quality planning, plans for elimination of coal consumption in certai...
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Despite extensive literature on renewable energy in China, the constraints faced by industry and regulators in expanding and integrating renewable energy into power systems remain opaque. Even power sector insiders can find it difficult to fully appreciate the overall picture of institutions and practices governing China’s power sector and the complex ways in w...
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China has used demand response to solve power supply shortages and react to power incidents since the 1990s. Traditional Chinese demand response is organized under the “orderly use of electricity,” led by the government to shift peak load and control power usage during emergency periods. This method played an important role in assuring safe grid operation in ...
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With the power sector in China accounting for more than half of annual coal consumption, it will play a key role in meeting the government’s goals to reduce carbon emissions, reduce coal consumption, and improve air quality. Under the auspices of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) and the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013–2017), many p...
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In Germany, high growth in decentralized renewable generation combined with the very large number of distribution system operators (~850) raises critical questions about the role of distribution operators, increasing grid costs, and how the charges (tariffs) to recover these costs should be designed and allocated among grid users. Grid tariffs are under particula...
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Saving money for electricity consumers in the Western states seems like it should be easy. Department of Energy researchers like Brendan Kirby, Michael Milligan, Kevin Porter, Debra Lew, Brian Parsons, and Lori Bird have been showing us for more than ten years how Western electricity consumers could save money by working together. The measures they suggest are mo...
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One wouldn’t necessarily expect the components of an electric bill to make headlines, but recent decisions in some states have caused controversy. The controversy involves the size of the monthly customer charge applied to residential consumers. Until recently, U.S. regulators generally allowed a charge of $10/month or less on residential customer bills—an am...
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