To resolve this, the model uses the variability of the weather as a strength, rather than a hindrance, by creating a single electrical power system across the US — a solution which the study says is cheaper than integrating energy storage…

However, the larger the area, the more effective they can be at balancing the supply and demand of electricity. This is particularly true when it comes to integrating intermittent renewables into the grid.

Having a larger area means that there is a larger volume of potential resources…

The study connects up the whole of the US through a network of high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission lines, which is capable of transporting electricity over long distances.”
http://www.carbonbrief.org/us-could-cut-power-emissions-78-by-2030-using-existing-technology-says-study

Future cost-competitive electricity systems and their impact on US CO2 emissions
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2921.html

Although I think you are overly optimistic about “the utilities” being able to change course, the issue of State control (and regulatory capture) is as you say the key. However, if we had a legitimate SCOTUS, wouldn’t the interstate commerce argument work to institute the kinds of structures I suggest?

Let the grid operator be the UPS for electricity, and let anyone who wants to participate in generation or consumption invest as they see fit. Some will win. Some will lose. But you get the best match of resource to end use, and it would not take that long. It would include efficiency, of course.

The idea that a PUC should be there to provide for anything but the regulation of a natural monopoly– which transmission is but generation is not– is simply wrong and anti-competitive.

So, yes, someone will exploit the market for charging EV and PIH, but that should be a generator.

Now you’re implying that consumer choice should be the focus, not proper pricing. Consumer choice does not rule out raising prices towards their “true costs” by factoring in the costs of producing & disposing of pollutants.

If $4/gallon is required to significantly change the consumption of gasoline in the U.S., then tariff/tax petroleum by the barrel until it’s $4/gallon. Along with reducing consumption (through less use/purchases of more efficient vehicles), that will greatly help in paying for development of alternatives. No one will go broke at $4/gallon. (If that were true, then that has happened already when gas was over $4… No, it didn’t happen.)

Doing such things is not “anti-competitive market manipulation”, it’s forcing the consumers to stop passing on some of the costs of their consumption to future generations (and to the detriment of the globe as well). That must stop, as failure to do so is an actual market manipulation itself: Encouraging consumption that would otherwise not occur by artificially lowering prices by gouging someone else (in the future). Worse, the “penalties & interest” are very steep and would be viewed as “not worth it” if the consumers were made aware & responsible.

For all your free market lecturing, you seem to be missing an important element to making markets truly free and on a level playing field. Robbing someone next year to subsidize one’s own consumption this year is hardly “free” — by any pet economic theory.

Trying to pick a fight for no reason is not helpful. I didn’t say there shouldn’t be a price on CO2; I’ve argued for that multiple times here. I am saying that it will be far more effective if there is actual consumer choice among competing generation types.

But yes, there is in fact a range of pricing that has little to no effect on consumption– petrol has to get into the $4(?) range in the US before there is significant impact on driving habits and auto choices.

And reducing consumption has to be part of that free market mix of options, which will not happen, again, if you allow anti-competitive market manipulation.

Think a little before your next knee-jerk.

It’s remarkable, then, to learn that customers have no reaction to having the price of goods and services change.

I.e., if the cost of power rises, customers will not react to that (?) by reducing their demand (via reducing usage or increasing efficiency).

Really? That goes against everything I’ve ever read about what ‘customers’ have been doing for centuries.

I’m still waiting for a cogent argument against adding the “true costs” for CO2 disposal to the goods & services that include such.

OK, you’re going to get zebra’s standard lecture on “free markets”, and I don’t want you to take offense– the majority of people I read on comment threads have succumbed to the right-wing brainwashing and double-speak machine.

A private company that only keeps the wires up and the system balanced is perfectly fine as a profit-making business entity. The problem is when it becomes a vertically integrated monopoly or closely linked retailer by generating electricity itself or “buying” it in an anti-competitive manner.

Because the grid is a natural monopoly, these companies need to be regulated the same way shipping companies are– as others have suggested, they should have non-discriminatory rate structures and only facilitate the exchange between buyers and sellers. That’s whether the seller is a nuclear plant or a homeowner with rooftop panels. That way, you can have a free market (a real free market, not the Fox News version) in electricity generation, which is the best way to optimize the allocation of resources.

One important simple point, although the advantages to such a paradigm are many. If you put a price on CO2 production, but allow utility monopolies to persist, they can simply pass on the costs to customers. Then, depending on the degree of regulatory capture, you have a long slog to get the disincentive to really take hold.

Notes:

1. “Free market” means roughly equivalent market power for buyers and sellers, not “free of government regulation so you can create monopolies and cheat the customer”. Buyers and sellers are “free” to make rational choices based on their perceived self-interest.

2. UPS, FedEx, trucking companies, and so on, provide good service and make a good profit. No reason grid operators can’t do the same on the same terms.

Maybe there is a bright side to drowning our coastal cities…

(I do prefer mountains to beaches, but this way we’ll get the best of both worlds — in the same places.)

Godspeed rescuing his drowning neighbors in time.. using that sub.

Godspeed to his EPA application for a Smart Grid permit to put it in his swimming pool