Project Reports
Restructuring and the Retail Residential Market for Power in Pennsylvania
October 2011
Andrew N. Kleit, Anastasia V Shcherbakova, and Xu Chen
Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and Energy Institute
The Pennsylvania State University
In January 2010 electricity retail residential rate caps expired in a large part of Pennsylvania, allowing consumers to shop for electricity in the retail market. In this paper we employ customer-level data from the relevant territory to analyze what residential customer and community characteristics impacted the decision of whether or not to switch to an alternative electricity provider, and when to make the switch.
Results show that customers with higher usage levels (especially around the time of the program‟s introduction), electric heating, and those living in more urban and more educated communities with lower unemployment rates and higher median household incomes....
The Debate over Power Authorities: A View from Pennsylvania
November 2010
"The Debate over Power Authorities: A View from Pennsylvania," Forthcoming, Regulation 34:1 (2011).
In several states that use restructured electricity markets to replace government-controlled price setting with competition, policy makers are seeking to reestablish the government's role through the creation of state-sanctioned power authorities. This report considers the arguments of power authority advocates from the point of view of the debate in Pennsylvania.
Analysis shows that the arguments advanced by advocates of a Pennsylvania Power Authority are deeply flawed. Electricity restructuring in Pennsylvania is not a failure. The single clearing price market used by PJM is a textbook market design, bringing all the efficiencies of Adam Smith's invisible...
Penn State uses bargaining power, conservation, green upgrades to save money
July 14, 2010 8:29am EDT
Centre County residents and businesses bracing for the end of electricity price caps might turn to Penn State for a glimpse at the future.
The university is in its second year of paying market prices for electricity at the University Park core campus. While Penn State saw its monthly bill nearly double in 2009, those costs are coming back down this year.
Michael Prinkey, Office of Physical Plant engineer, said the university’s size allows it to buy blocks of power from wholesale suppliers. That has helped to bring the price down.
Added to that, the university has been making a push in recent years to make its buildings more energy efficient. The university created the Campus Sustainability Office in 2009 as part of its efforts to reduce energy use, increase conservation and promote “green” research. Changing student and staff behavior — from turning off lights not being used to starting a student “Eco-Rep” program — is also part of the effort.
Eric Foley, manager of the Sustainability Office, said that as much as 30 percent of a building’s electricity usage is under control of the occupants.
“At Penn State, when you put all the numbers together, what is under people’s control could be in the range of a half million to a million dollars a year in potential savings,” Foley said.
Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/2010/07/14/2092477/knowledge-is-power.html#ixzz0tezLDhe1
Are Competitive Markets Green?
Principal Investigators: R. J. Briggs, Zhen Lei
Does restructuring of electricity markets through the introduction of competition lead to better environmental outcomes? As the market for electricity supply in Pennsylvania moves towards full wholesale and retail competition, consumers should benefit from increased cost efficiency: competitive pressures give generation suppliers incentives to provide electricity at its lowest private marginal cost. As Burtraw and Palmer (2005) discuss, “electricity restructuring has had both predictable ...
Non-Dispatchable Generation and Energy Storage in the PJM Market
Investigators: Seth Blumsack and George Young
April 2010
Proposed Work
Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are viewed as appealing technological options for decreasing the environmental impacts of electric power generation. While the capital costs of wind turbines and solar photovoltaic modules are declining, neither could be described as economically competitive (compared to fossil generation) without some form of public support. Many states have instituted “Renewable Portfolio Standards” (RPS) that establish quotas for alternative energy sources. Some RPS policies include specific carve-outs ...
Restructuring and the Retail Market for Power in Pennsylvania
Investigators: Andrew N. Kleit and Anastasia V Shcherbakova
Electricity restructuring involves the introduction of competitive markets to determine just and reasonable prices for both the generation and retailing of electricity. Generation in Pennsylvania has been effectively open to competition with oversight by FERC and PJM since 1998. Competitive retailing, although subject to competition, has been impeded by the fixed price...