Full Title: Valuing Distributed Energy: Economic and Regulatory Challenges
Author(s): Travis Bradford and Anne Hoskins
Publisher(s): Columbia and Princeton Universities
Publication Date: April 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The rise of Distributed Energy (DE) resources – including Distributed Generation (DG), Energy Efficiency (EE), Demand Response (DR), and Customer-Sited Storage – is changing how the grid functions. As the grid becomes increasingly distributed, opportunities and risks are likely to grow, and must be managed.
Electricity customers are becoming increasingly focused on the need to have access to reliable, affordable and sustainable sources of energy. Technological developments and cost reductions in solar panels, smart meters, and battery storage provide promise of falling costs and smarter infrastructure. There is growing recognition that DE resources can provide benefits to customers and to the power system, but also concerns about valuation, integration and operational cost allocation and recovery. It is necessary to re-examine the economics of connecting these resources to the grid, and to explicitly value the costs and benefits of doing so.