Tag Archives: Electricity
Splitting the Emissions Baby: Allocating GHG Reductions in the Electricity Sector Part I
One area of our work at EPIC is to provide technical support to cities, counties, and regional planning organizations in the climate planning process. This work includes estimating greenhouse gas emissions for inventories and the reductions expected from a variety of policies … Continue reading
Half-Empty Planes: Utilization Rates for California’s Electric Grid Part II
In Part I of this post, we discussed the concept of asset utilization — or load factor — and looked at recent trends for California’s investor-owned utilities (IOU). The trend over the past two decades for IOU load factors has been … Continue reading
Residential Rates Revisited – Part 3: Legislative Fixes
In Part 1 of this series was a brief retrospective of some of the antecedents of today’s discussion of residential rates in California. In Part 2, we discussed in more detail the concept of inclining block rates, the policy rationale … Continue reading
Residential Electric Rates Revisited – Part 1: A Historical Perspective
Residential rates always seem to be in the news for one reason or another. These days, residential rates are the subject of pending legislation (AB 327) and an ongoing rulemaking at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) (R.12-06-013). To help … Continue reading
Load Factor
Load factor is the ratio of average demand to peak demand, typically measured in megawatts (MW) on a system wide level. It is a useful metric to show how much of the entire electric delivery system capacity is being used … Continue reading