Steve Pomerance

This title is a combination of “creative destruction,” that which occurs when innovation destroys an economic system, and the thesis of “Disruptive Challenges,” a paper that discusses the impact of distributed renewable energy on the utility business model. This study was prepared for the Edison Electric Institute, an association of U.S. investor-owned electric companies, and is on their website. In recent years, utility regulators, public interest groups, and even utility companies themselves have asked whether the changes that are coming will disrupt their business and regulatory models in the way that that mini-mills changed the steel industry, or the internet and cell phones changed the Ma Bell telephone companies. If that happens, history may be repeated, with current players being replaced by newer, more nimble competitors and the whole economic structure reconfigured. On the supply side, photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, gas-powered micro-turbines and fuel cells like Bloo...

Xcel Energy, in what appears to be an attempt to gain a PR victory to try to stop Boulder from creating a municipal electric utility to escape from Xcel’s coal-intensive monopoly, asked the city to engage in yet another last-moment process. I fully expect Xcel to use this to try to kill the muni process so it can keep its Boulder customer base. The first four Xcel-City processes in the last five years produced little to nothing of value: The first was SmartGridCity, which Xcel promised to be the Holy Grail by helping integrate solar, wind, and demand management, providing real time billing and information, and costing the ratepayers nothing. SGC ended up producing little of customer value, and ratepayers are already on the hook for nearly $30 million of its costs. Then came the franchise negotiations, in which Xcel basically stonewalled the city. After the vote on the occupation tax that replaced the franchise came the city’s offer to Xcel to be its “laboratory” , where Xcel could ...