How Should We Pay for the Grid?

Energy Gang

Wood Mackenzie

Tech News, Environment, Sustainability, Innovation, Renewable Energy, Technology, Alternative Energy, Energy, News, Cleantech, Wind Energy, Business, Climate Change, Solar Energy

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2016

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are at the beginning of one of the greatest economic and consumer behavior experiments ever seen in the energy sector. How do we refine pricing in order to rapidly transition our aging, centralized grid to a clean, decentralized one? And can we do it so that we limit the economic losers, pay for the fixed costs of operating the grid, and make everyone whole? It’s a complicated question. The range of actual rate design options – decoupling, minimum bills, demand charges, fixed charges, and time-of-use – offer so many varying benefits and drawbacks. Everyone agrees that we’re moving to a distributed grid. But there’s a lot of disagreement on how to pay for it. That is what we’re tackling in the show this week. We’re joined by Lisa Wood, the executive director of the Edison Institute for Electric Innovation, and Ralph Cavanagh, a senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council. Their perspectives on rate design are featured in a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, called "Recovery of Utility Fixed Costs: Utility, Consumer, Environmental and Economist Perspectives." This podcast is sponsored by Mission Solar Energy, an American solar cell and module manufacturer: http://www.missionsolar.com/ This is a complimentary episode of our premium podcast, The Interchange. Find out more about GTM Squared: http://www.greentechmedia.com/squared See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey folks, Stephen Lacey here. I'm happy this week to present a free episode of our premium
0:06.5	podcast, The Interchange. In this episode, we're getting deep on rate design, one of the most
0:12.1	important issues in the distributed energy
0:13.8	transition. So if you like what you hear, make sure to become a square. For only
0:18.3	$249 a year you'll get access to a ton of extra long-form print content, this podcast, a yearly industry
0:25.2	survey, plus live streams to all our events.
0:28.4	And we offer enterprise accounts too, which is a pretty popular option.
0:32.0	So if you want to share market intelligence with your employees
0:35.0	and make them better employees, consider an enterprise account.
0:38.0	We also offer a $200 discount to all GTM events.
0:42.0	Coming up next week, in in San Diego we're doing a
0:45.4	live interchange at our Solar Market Insight conference. So if you were a
0:49.5	member you'd get a discount or access to the live stream.
0:53.0	You can find out more at greentech media.com slash squared
0:57.0	or email us at squared at greentech media.
1:00.0	And before we start the show, I want to mention our sponsor this week, Mission Solar. Mission Solar is a
1:06.8	cell and module manufacturer based in San Antonio, Texas. The company is proud to be part of America's
1:12.2	booming solar industry.
1:14.0	Its manufacturing facility supports 400 U.S. workers directly contributing to the burgeoning clean energy economy.
1:20.0	And that's not the only benefit of being located in the US. Mission Solar's Texas-based
1:25.0	headquarters make it easier to fulfill the needs of domestic developers, keeping your projects
1:29.4	moving and on schedule. With a state-of-the-art R&D lab, Mission Solar pushes cutting-edge technology
	...

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