Author Archives: Constance Douris, M.A.
How to Assure Grid Stability While Tapping Third-Party Energy Sources The California Public Utilities Commission approved a pilot program in December that incentivizes utilities to use more distributed energy resources. These resources are defined as renewable generation sources, energy efficiency, energy storage, electric vehicles, and demand response technologies. As part [Read More...]
Third Party Energy Resources Are The Future Of The Electric Grid Electric utilities in California make money from investments for traditional infrastructure, such as power lines, poles, and wires. However, this is based on an outdated regulatory model focused on increasing electricity access. Utilities are motivated to build more of such [Read More...]
DARPA Research Leads Grid Security Solutions (From The National Interest) The U.S. electric grid is vulnerable to a cyber-attack that could take electricity offline if successful. Protecting against cyber threats requires staying ahead of technology, maintaining transparency and sharing information. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is one government [Read More...]
California Approves Pilot Program For More Reliable Electricity Demand is increasing on the nation’s electric grid and electricity shortages, power quality problems, rolling blackouts and electricity price increases have motivated many customers to seek more reliable electricity through a variety of sources and technologies. Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) [Read More...]
Cyber Threats to the U.S. Electric Grid Are Real (From The National Interest) On December 30th, the Washington Post incorrectly reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid through a Vermont utility. While this story ended up being an error as malicious code was found in a computer which was not [Read More...]
California To Decide Fate of Independent Energy Providers The California Public Utilities Commission will vote December 15 on a proposal encouraging utilities to embrace distributed energy resources. Changes in consumer preferences, technological progress, and legislative and regulatory shifts have created an environment for the expansion of distributed energy [Read More...]
President Obama Supports Debt Relief for Greece (From The National Interest) Greece has implemented financial reforms, and now it is time to restructure Athens’ debt to allow its struggling economy to grow. Sustainable debt would increase investor confidence, improve the country’s credit rating, and play a significant role as to whether [Read More...]
How California Is Protecting Its Critical Infrastructure from Cyber Threats (from The National Interest) To protect power grid integration from cyber threats in California, the California Public Utilities Commission has funded a cyber information sharing program, California Energy Systems for the 21st Century (CES-21). According to Jamie Van Randwyck, project lead for Lawrence Livermore [Read More...]
The Adaptive Engine Transition Program Will Revolutionize Combat Aircraft Performance (from The National Interest) American air power is critical to mission success – it provides precision strike, rapid logistics, detailed reconnaissance and air dominance while denying those advantages to adversaries. It is essential that the U.S. continue to advance its air power to outpace [Read More...]
NATO’s Urgent Effort to Deter Russian Aggression Russia’s hybrid warfare and anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities have caused great concern among neighboring nations. Moscow’s aggressiveness is viewed as seeking to weaken the NATO alliance and European partnerships. As a result, many European countries view Russia as a threat, [Read More...]