Earlier this year I worked as an election judge for the city of Minneapolis. It was the city’s second experience with ranked choice voting, a system where instead of voting for a single candidate, you get to pick your top three choices. If your first choice candidate is mathematically eliminated … [continued]
Originally published on EIA. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly About 6.2% of total U.S. electricity supplies in 2013 were generated from nonhydro renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal, up from 5.4% in 2012. But 11 states produced electricity at more than twice the national … [continued]
Originally published on Today in Energy. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly In 2013, 12 states accounted for 80% of U.S. wind-generated electricity, according to preliminary generation data released in EIA’s March Electric Power Monthly report. Texas was again the top wind power state with nearly 36 million megawatthours (MWh) of … [continued]
Two weeks ago, Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission ratified the first-ever statewide policy for setting a fair and transparent price on solar energy. This week, a coalition of companies that provide leasing contracts for solar to home and business customers declared war on this “value of solar” policy, and pretty much … [continued]
In March 2014, Minnesota became the first state to adopt a “value of solar” policy to set a fair, transparent price on solar energy. It may serve as a national precedent and fundamentally change the financial relationship between electric utilities and their energy-producing customers. So what will value of solar … [continued]
Originally published on Rocky Mountain Institute. By Rebecca Cole In the final installment of our eLab Accelerator blog series this week (read Part 1 and Part 2), we are reviewing three teams who are focused on developing strategies to understand and achieve clean energy futures. The increasing capability and affordability of renewables and … [continued]
Originally published on Rocky Mountain Institute. By Rebecca Cole In this second installment of our eLab Accelerator blog series (read part 1), we are exploring how companies, organizations, states, and communities are working to evolve utility business models, rate structures, and regulatory structures so that renewable and distributed resources can … [continued]
By Karl R. Rábago Value of Solar analysis and the Value of Solar Tariff adopted in Austin, Texas and Minnesota are promising developments in solar utility rates. These ideas can break the cycle of attacks on rooftop solar and deserve the support of the solar industry, utilities, and others who want … [continued]
Bernard Chabot and Renewables International have published an excellent short report on renewable electricity production in the United States in 2012 and 2013. I recommend checking out the full report (thanks to a reader for passing it along), but for those of you who aren’t into digging into full reports, I’m sharing … [continued]
State-based solar incentives that require local solar products be used may be driving up solar costs considerably. Of course, this sort of issue is not exclusive to solar power and it is not exclusive to the United States, but there does seem to be fairly good evidence that it is … [continued]
