In a webinar for the Utah Public Service Commission, Jim Lazar, John Shenot, and Richard Sedano explore the intricacies of time-of-use rates....

Ever since the introduction of retail competition in the late 1990s, the traditional regulatory paradigm that guided the last century has been evolving to adapt to the emergence of new energy technologies and the consumers’ appetite to have more control over their energy usage. As happens with many new technologies, consumer adoption of rooftop photovoltaic (PV...

As utilities and regulators consider their strategies for complying with greenhouse gas emissions limits under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) forthcoming Clean Power Plan (CPP), natural gas has an important role to play. But a “dash to gas” approach could leave many gas infrastructure assets unusable as soon as 2030. A smarter approach wil...

Ensuring that an acceptable level of electric system reliability is maintained as the Clean Power Plan is implemented is in everyone’s interest. This short paper suggests ways states can think about their reliability targets and associated tolerance bands in assessing whether possible compliance plans will maintain a level of system reliability that is consiste...

Thanks in large part to some recent guidance and proposed federal regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state and local air pollution regulators have a growing interest in using energy efficiency (EE) as a strategy to improve air quality. The largest challenge for air pollution regulators is to quantify the impacts of EE in a way that is ...

As installed solar photovoltaic grows at unprecedented rates, the role of the electricity consumer is fundamentally changing. Customers are transitioning from being passive recipients of utility services to being active participants in both providing and receiving grid services. Distributed generation (DG) tariffs must evolve to reflect this changing environment....

Improvements in distributed generation economics, increasing consumer preference for clean, distributed energy resources, and a favorable policy environment in many states have combined to produce significant increases in distributed generation adoption in the United States. Regulators are looking for the well-designed tariff that compensates distributed generati...

Increased adoption of distributed solar photovoltaics (PV), and other forms of distributed generation, have the potential to affect utility-customer interactions, system costs recovery, and utility revenue streams. If a greater number of electricity customers choose to self-generate, demand for system power will decrease and utility fixed costs will have to be re...