This special report examines the electric utility industry's response to soaring demand for electricity, rising environmental regulation and a host of new regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and spurring use of renewable power sources.
Click here to see all of the stories in the report.
A “Reddy Kilowatt” song and dance invited 1950s PG&E customers to "plug in" to electricity. Click here to watch the video. (Posted: 08/11/08)
WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. -- The next power plant in your town might just be your neighbor's house, or yours.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Habitat for Humanity built a home here in this Denver suburb that generates enough electricity for its occupants and then some, having provided about 3,600 kilowatt-hours to the power grid since October 2005. The excess power is about a third of the electricity that an average household uses every year and enough to fuel an electric vehicle for 13,500 miles.
About 30 miles away, Eric Doub, owner of Ecofutures Building in Boulder, lives in a house heated and powered entirely by solar energy, on balance. After adding more solar panels, Doub said his house will provide more than 400 kilowatt-hours a month to the power company in summer and be almost demand-neutral this winter. It has produced enough excess electricity this past year to drive an electric car about 4,000 miles, worth about $485 in gas.
That's not all. Doub has designed another house that would generate a whopping 25,858 kilowatts -- 80 to 150 percent more electricity than it would consume. "It's going to be a power plant," he said.
While a solar-powered house generates little electricity compared to an old-fashioned power plant -- a 500-megawatt plant sells about 3.9 billion kilowatt-hours per year -- many experts see what they call "distributed generation" adding up eventually to a substantial U.S. energy source. The possibilities have a few electric utilities eyeing houses, commercial buildings and industrial complexes as future energy generators.
Last month, Southern California Edison began installing solar panels on leased commercial roof space as part of a plan to install 250 megawatts of solar panels across 2 square miles of roofs in the next five years.
North Carolina-based Duke Energy is also pursuing a $100 million pilot program that would place solar panels on 850 houses, schools, buildings and lots for a total of 16 megawatts of generation capacity. Owen Smith, managing director of Duke's renewable energy and carbon strategy, said the utility is just trying to get ahead of what it believes could be a trend.
"We think distributed generation is something that will take hold en masse," Smith said. "Distributed generation is something that is going to be more and more important going forward."
| 09/11/2008 | UTILITIES: Meet 'Common Sense Sam,' pitchman for coal powerATLANTA -- Electric-power giant Southern Co. has a new lobbyist, "Sam," an androgynous cartoon character with an oversize nose, a shock of red hair and a smile who appears in newspapers and online sites frequented by policymakers. Sam strolls into one ad pushing a wagon heaped with symbols of energy options -- a whirring turbine, a bundle of switchgrass, an atom, a compact fluorescent light bulb and a hunk of coal. His message: "Different energy sources are smart for different reasons. Common sense says, don't just use one." But the ad at its heart is a paean to coal -- Southern Co.'s fuel of choice to power more than 4.3 million homes and businesses across the utility's four-state service territory. |  Greenwire |
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| 08/22/2008 | UTILITIES: Xcel starts turning Boulder, Colo., into a 'smart grid' Skinner BoxIf you can think of electricity as a chain that connects the power plant to your portable music player, you can grasp the notion of "smart grid." Broadly, smart grid means applying modern, digital technology to the analog world of electricity infrastructure. But what makes a grid smart is anybody's guess right now. Xcel Energy, a utility serving eight states -- Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin -- aims to firm up the definition. With a pilot program called Smart Grid City, the company is installing a network of technologies it says will serve as a "living laboratory" to test smart-grid components. | Greenwire |
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| 08/15/2008 | UTILITIES: New energy initiatives, programs tossing curves at regulatorsFlorida Power and Light's renewable energy program ranked among the most successful U.S. green electricity efforts. The voluntary program was seen as a model for electric utilities facing conflicting demands for more electricity and greater environmental stewardship. Then suddenly, state utility regulators shut down the program last month. The Florida Public Service Commission found the utility had spent 75 percent of program revenues on marketing and administrative costs, not on renewable power. | Greenwire |
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| 08/11/2008 | UTILITIES: Would you turn down the AC for a man wrapped in a fluorescent bulb?Smiling, with hands on hips, wearing spandex and wrapped in a glowing fluorescent bulb, Save the Watts Guy stands ready to save the planet, your wallet and -- maybe -- the electric power industry. The campy superhero is the face of Progress Energy's "Save the Watts" ad campaign for energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Raleigh, N.C.-based company -- owner of utilities in northern Florida and the Carolinas -- launched the effort last year in hopes of getting its 3.1 million customers to try low-watt bulbs, switch off lights and turn down air conditioners. "People normally don't think about their utility being very cutting-edge," company spokesman Scott Sutton said. "We are trying to change that perception." | Greenwire |
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