Tag: electric grid

Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #32 – Rossi & Serkin

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This Thursday’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode features features the University of Texas’s David Spence interviewing Vanderbilt Law School’s Jim Rossi and Chris Serkin about their proposal for “Energy Exactions“.

Jim and Chris describe this proposal, which would have local governments impose “a fee on development … that is designed to avoid strains on the energy grid.” It would build on existing negotiations between developers and local governments that often require developers to pay for some of the local services they will require. To comply with an energy exaction, a developer could either pay for the new burden it would place on the energy grid or even pay for energy-saving technologies that would eliminate this burden.

This discussion explores Jim and Chris’s recent paper, which was published in the Cornell Law Review and is also titled “Energy Exactions“.

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Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #30 – Rhodes & Meehan

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This week’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode features David Spence interviewing Joshua Rhodes & Colin Meehan about their research on “Keeping the Lights on in a High Renewables Grid.”

Josh & Colin explain the concept of grid “inertia” and why it is so important for grid stability. The grid must always maintain the same frequency and inertia steadies this frequency when a power plant suddenly goes offline. They explain that wind and solar power do not provide the same inertia as conventional plants but describe ways of making the grid flexible to accommodate high levels of renewable power nevertheless.

Josh & Colin also describes how renewable power sources can provide “fast frequency response” as a substitute for inertia. But they explain that doing so would require reducing power output from these sources, which might require modifying markets to pay for ancillary services that maintain the grid’s frequency.

The discussion builds on one of Josh’s recent articles: “Evaluating rotational inertia as a component of grid reliability with high penetrations of variable renewable energy,” which was published last year in the journal Energy.

The Energy Tradeoffs Podcast can be found at the following links: 
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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