The OurEnergyLibrary aggregates and indexes publicly available fact sheets, journal articles, reports, studies, and other publications on U.S. energy topics. It is updated every week to include the most recent energy resources from academia, government, industry, non-profits, think tanks, and trade associations. Suggest a resource by emailing us at info@ourenergypolicy.org.
Resource Library
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The Department of Defense (DoD) is increasingly reliant on electric power for critical national defense missions. Domestic
military installations are connected to the civilian electric grid, which is under threat from more frequent and extreme
weather events, aging and outdated infrastructure, and cyber and physical attacks from determined adversaries. In response,
DoD and the military services have issued strong energy resilience policies and developed dozens of energy resilience
and distributed energy projects.
In order to scale the deployment of energy resilience projects to secure critical missions, DoD will have to continue and expand partnerships with states, communities, regulators, utilities and …
View Full ResourceMicrogrids are now emerging from lab benches and pilot demonstration sites into commercial markets, driven by technological improvements, falling costs, a proven track record, and growing recognition of their benefits. They are being used to improve reliability and resilience of electrical grids, to manage the addition of distributed clean energy resources like wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) generation to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and to provide electricity in areas not served by centralized electrical infrastructure. This review article (1) explains what a microgrid is, and (2) provides a multi-disciplinary portrait of today’s microgrid drivers, real-world applications, challenges, and future prospects.…
View Full ResourceThe issue of ‘resilience’ of the power system—including how to best define, measure, and ensure it—has
garnered substantial attention in recent months. The energy policy community turned its collective focus
to resilience issues following the devastating electric grid failures in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane
Maria, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) September 2017 proposal of the Grid ResiliencyU
Pricing Rule. DOE submitted the proposed rulemaking to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with the stated purpose of expeditiously bolstering the grid’s resilience and reliability. The proposal called for tariff changes to ensure the recovery …
The electric power systems of many industrialized nations are challenged by the need to accommodate distributed renewable generation, increasing demands of a digital society, growing threats to infrastructure security, and concerns over global climate disruption. The “smart grid”—with a two-way flow of electricity and information between utilities and consumers—can help address these challenges, but various financial, regulatory, and technical obstacles hinder its rapid deployment. An overview of experiences with smart grid governance policies in pioneering countries shows that many governments have designed interventions to overcome these barriers and to facilitate grid modernization. Smart grid policies include a new generation of …
View Full ResourcePaul Tonko (D-NY-20), Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, hosted a Discussion at OurEnergyPolicy.org (OEP) on the federal government’s role in addressing grid resilience. Here is a snapshot of the perspectives offered by OEP’s community of energy professionals.…
View Full ResourceDigitization means applying recent advances in digital technology such as electronic devices or data and information systems, to improve the technical and economic performance of real activities, systems, businesses, and organizations. The Bipartisan Policy Center launched the Digitizing the Power Sector initiative to better understand the challenges and opportunities of digitization as applied to one of our nation’s most complex and vital infrastructure systems: the electricity grid.
The electric power sector is changing rapidly, enabled by digitization. Government officials at all levels are grappling with how to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs. The goal of this paper is …
View Full ResourceSmall Modular Reactors: Adding to Resilience at Federal Facilities (this “Report”) expands on the January 2017 report entitled Purchasing Power Produced by Small Modular Reactors: Federal Agency Options (the “Initial Report”). The Initial Report focused on assisting federal agencies to identify options to participate in the purchase of power produced by small modular reactors (“SMRs”), the structure and issues with financing an SMR, and the unique issues that federal agencies face when making power purchase decisions. The Initial Report identified how federal agencies can purchase SMR-produced power through long-term agreements (over thirty (30) years) by using the Utah Associated Municipal …
View Full ResourceBrattle Principals Metin Celebi, Judy Chang, Marc Chupka, Sam Newell, and Ira Shavel authored a report that supported comments a diverse coalition of energy companies submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in response to Secretary of Energy Rick Perry’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (DOE NOPR). The NOPR would place eligible coal and nuclear units under cost-of-service tariffs within regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) with energy and capacity markets.
The report which was filed with the comment on October 23, 2017, noted that:
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There is no evidence demonstrating that RTOs/ISOs need to subsidize resources with
Pursuant to section 403 of the Department of Energy Organization Act (DOE Act), the Secretary of Energy (Secretary) is proposing a rule for final action by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission or FERC). The Secretary is proposing the Commission exercise its authority under sections 205 and 206 of the Federal Power Act (FPA), to establish just and reasonable rates on Commission-approved independent system operators (ISOs) and regional transmission organizations (RTOs) to ensure that certain reliability and resilience attributes of electric generation resources are fully valued. The Secretary is directing the Commission to take final action on this proposal within …
View Full ResourceThe U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) new report on the U.S. electric grid makes valuable recommendations for expanding access to reliable, low-cost electricity by streamlining approval of electric transmission infrastructure and using markets to procure essential reliability services. As a low-cost source of energy that can provide reliability services as well as or better than conventional power plants, wind energy will flourish with the expansion of markets and infrastructure…
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