Electricity Journal最新文献

Coal power plants are retiring in the United States due to a sharp decline in natural gas prices along with an aging fleet, the rising cost of coal, and decarbonization goals. In the last five years alone (2019–2023), more than 58 gigawatts (GW) of coal power capacity retired in the United States, while almost 30 percent of the remaining 194 GW of operating capacity is expected to retire by 2040. The cessation of operations at an existing power plant can have important impacts on the local economy, including job loss and a potential reduction in total economic output. Repurposing these assets effectively, including conversion into other power generation technologies, industrial manufacturing facilities, or commercial buildings, among others, can at least partially offset any negative economic impacts. This paper provides a review of ongoing and planned repurposing activities related to former coal power plants (not including repurposing related to fuel-switching from coal to natural gas) being pursued by utilities across the United States and discusses the costs, benefits, and challenges presented by types of repurposing assets or prospects.² The review shows that the repurposing type and capacity of the new projects is typically unrelated to the asset type and capacity being retired. The decision to repurpose a retiring power plant or unit is a result of a combination of factors that include, among others, decommissioning costs, land availability, and financial and regulatory incentives directed towards a clean and just energy transition. A list of current planned, in-process (under construction), or completed repurposing projects for energy and non-energy alternatives is presented, including several reference examples of repurposing from fuels other than coal. Relevant factors to consider in repurposing existing retiring assets, including the relevance of incentives for retiring assets in a just energy transition, are identified and described.

In this study, we examine the impact of rural electrification on women empowerment. Previous studies have examined this relationship mainly using self-reported measures of empowerment, and experimental approaches . We conduct an incentive-compatible framed field experiment in a natural household setting. We modify the public goods game by introducing a trade-off between real household items and cash in three scenarios: a woman-only case, a man-only case, and a joint decision case. We then construct a women empowerment index ranging between 0 and 1. A joint decision closer to 1 indicates greater bargaining power for the wife, while a joint decision closer to 0 indicates greater bargaining power for the husband. We then apply propensity score matching to address potential selection bias. We find households in rural electrification villages, to have higher women empowerment index.

The U.S. government has made addressing energy equity a key objective of its decarbonization efforts. While energy equity has been studied for decades, equity research in the U.S. has only very recently focused on impacts specific to decarbonization. To guide the implementation of new federal funding for clean energy investments in disadvantaged communities, federal agencies are relying on national-scale socioeconomic and demographic tools to define disadvantaged communities and energy equity metrics. Through an analysis of U.S.-oriented energy equity literature and recently developed tools and frameworks for decarbonization, this paper provides the first comparison of U.S. national versus subnational perspectives on defining disadvantaged communities, their energy equity concerns, and relevant metrics in the context of decarbonization. We show that the U.S. top-down approach to an energy equity framework for decarbonization, while necessary for large-scale policymaking, does not identify all disadvantaged communities nor the diversity and complexity of their concerns and is insufficient to ensure equitable decarbonization.

The “Minnesota Paradox” points to the nation-leading socioeconomic indicators enjoyed in Minnesota that belie some of the largest racial disparities between the state’s majority White and minority Black populations. The Minnesota Paradox has been identified in indicators with complex, structural social determinants: income, employment, educational outcomes, incarceration rates, home ownership, and even drowning. In this paper, we ask if similar disparities exist in access to shared infrastructure systems, focusing on the electric system, an essential service delivered by heavily regulated public utilities. We examine disparities in access to electricity service across three dimensions: utility disconnection, service reliability, and availability of the grid to host distributed energy resources. We quantify disparities across Census block groups by leveraging unique, high-resolution datasets that have only recently been made publicly available. We find significant and pervasive evidence of the Minnesota Paradox across utility disconnection and service reliability. Across a battery of regression models, we find that living in neighborhoods with a greater concentration of people of color is associated with a statistically and practically significant difference in the likelihood of disconnection from service due to non-payment and the experience of extended power outages. We also find a positive association between communities with larger populations of people of color and hosting capacity, suggesting a potential opportunity to affirmatively address disparities in energy insecurity in the energy transition. These findings shed light on the pervasive nature of the Minnesota Paradox in the electric system, which underscores the pressing need for policy initiatives to rectify deep-seated inequalities and ensure all communities have equitable access to universal basic utility service and reliable, clean energy.

Consumers’ knowledge of electricity prices and its effect on their behaviors have been widely studied, yet the comparison and generalization of these findings are challenging due to variations in definition and survey items. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework to assess Electricity Price Literacy by introducing a functional representation that encompasses various electricity pricing systems and categorizing into three knowledge domains to systematically organize previous literature's knowledge measures. To demonstrate the practicality of this framework, a survey was administered to a nationwide sample of 4214 electricity consumers in South Korea. The survey results highlight variations in electricity price literacy across different domains and reveal varying relationships between domain-specific knowledge and behaviors, thereby highlighting the need for a decomposed measure of price knowledge.

The consumption of coal, oil, and other fossil fuels has raised concerns about climate change. The Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement aimed to address climate change by promoting sustainable clean energy technologies. The UN conference in the United Arab Emirates in December 2023 concluded with an agreement marking the end of the fossil fuel era. All these developments aim to address climate change through the use of clean energy technologies while maintaining economic growth. The connection of climate change with the developing model has gained significant importance on countries’ adjusted plans for climate change. The fossil fuels have a negative impact on economic growth of Greece, implying a continuous dependence from non renewable energy sources and a burden of economic expansion. The reliable estimation of the consequences of climate change on growth, both spatial and temporal, constitutes a decisive parameter for the adjusted plan not only in short term level but also in a long term horizon. Focusing on the improvement of energy efficiency, on the maximization use of renewable energy sources in Greece, on the emphasis given to technologies and fuels storage as well as alternative technologies of energetic and industrial sector, the achievement of energetic and climate transition designed on Greece will be feasible on a long term strategy. The results showed that the growth of renewable energy sources to produce electric energy is necessary for the sustainable growth of Greece. Specifically, the results of ARDL model showed that the renewable energy sources have a positive impact on economic growth in Greece in the long run, and the non-renewable energy sources have a significant effect on economic growth in the short run. These results imply that the aim for investments on renewable energy sources from policy makers should be direct mainly on regions with high levels of carbon dioxide emissions due to lignite combustion.

To ensure a smooth energy transition, rapid expansion of the electric grid is essential to accommodate growing renewable power generation. We assess the role battery storage can play for the power system by either complementing or replacing costly line reinforcements. Adopting a benevolent planner point-of-view, we optimise the expansion of storage with the grid. We focus on a discrete representation of the sub-transmission grid. Given high reinforcement costs and efficient batteries, storage could replace grid investments, especially during low energy prices periods. Additionally, adopting a cost-effective grid representation minimizes storage investments. Ultimately, our work aims to empower grid operators to efficiently utilize battery storage in planning grid expansion.

Solar photovoltaics (PV) are among the cheapest forms of energy globally and one of the most effective options for mitigating the climate crisis in the electricity sector. In 2023, solar PV accounted for roughly 75 % of renewable power capacity additions globally, and capacity is expected to grow 20-fold by 2050. However, the political ecologies of solar power are uneven. Throughout the value chain, there are numerous social and environmental injustices experienced by laborers and in communities that are converted to sacrifice zones for sustainable development. Despite being the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India is developing solar infrastructures at a rapid pace to mitigate the climate crisis. Drawn from a rich collection of original data—household surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and naturalistic observation across various sites—in this study, we investigate perceptions by laborers of the hidden injustices of solar energy at multiple nodes of the solar PV lifecycle or value chain: silica mining (Uttar Pradesh), solar panel manufacturing (Karnataka), solar park development (Rajasthan), solar park operation (Rajasthan), e-waste (Delhi) and recycling (Tamil Nadu). We conclude with novel findings and urgent recommendations for future policy and research on India’s solar PV value chain.

Controlling capital costs and cost overruns due to construction field change orders (FCOs) is essential for the electric power industry to provide affordable energy services. Conversion from overhead to underground systems due to security and climate change factors will increase the risk of FCOs due to site conditions. The failure in collaboration by front-end planning (FEP) teams can increase risk of FCOs due to missing scopes, errors in design, lack of existing field condition evaluation, constraints on the project schedule, or unexpected field conditions, among other causes. This study involved development of a quality control process that enables members of the FEP team to vote their confidence levels about risk control of FCOs before proceeding to final design. The proposed process utilized Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodologies to distribute the weights of stakeholder votes based on responsibilities for each category of FCOs to obtain an integrated metric of FEP team confidence. Data from an operational electric power utility was used to provide a case scenario approach and to illustrate the method. Three actual projects were analyzed to assess how well the process would have worked for them. The novelty of the proposed model is to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative working relationships across teams during the FEP process and to provide a quality control metric to capture risk of FCOs in the early phase to minimize cost overruns in the project execution phase.