On my recent piece on the regulation of our power utilities, frequent commenter Glenn Doty writes:
Part of the issue here is there are multiple entities that have some regulatory influence over the grid: FERC, NERC, NRC, DOE, State governments, RTO’s or ISO’s, local governments (zoning), etc… But while there’s a maze of entities overlapping, there are few regulations that do anything other than help ensure constant reliable power – and I wouldn’t want to see those regulations unraveled without great care.
I hear you, but I’m unswayed – not that I favor unreliable power, only that I see a new day dawning in which value is placed on sustainability – and that, I believe, will come at the expense of a wholesale rethinking of who pays for what.
I fully admit that this is a horribly complicated situation, because there are so many moving parts. We have regulated and deregulated areas, and we have innovations like smart-grid and energy storage that offer many different types of benefits to different constituencies: generation, transmission, distribution, and end-customers – all coming with their own hard costs and other challenges.
It’s going to require a great deal of objectivity and honesty to make the adjustments that our society needs. But are there people/entities with a sufficient level of both fair-mindedness and the power to make it happen? I’m not sure.
