When you look through the lens of policy, there are essentially 3 business models for an active demand side in the power markets -- I try to lay these out in some remarks I have for one of my favorite org's (@EnergySystemsIG) closing plenary tomorrow 🧵

Full report here:

It is great to see a couple of topics that have otherwise been neglected but are squarely state-jurisdictional issues (ensuring that capacity purchased by EDCs and LDCs is optimally utilized through "capacity release" & gas demand response) included in the report.

Congrats to @TPridemore & @RepFedorchak for their leadership instituting this, as well as to Comms. @DanScripps (MI), Dwight Keen (KS), @LeaPeterson (AZ), Josh Byrnes (IA), Gerwatowski (RI), Katie Sieben (MN) for their work. @nrgenergy was proud to contribute through Chris Moser

Over the past 2 years @NARUC has convened a work group to improve gas-electric coordination, and its work product is one of the most substantive, actionable documents that the organization has produced in recent memory.

The world needs honest and courageous entrepreneurs and communicators who care for the common good. We sometimes hear the saying: “Business is business!” In reality, it is not so. No one is absorbed by an organization to the point of becoming a mere cog or a simple function. Nor

Delighted to report that this flight arrived *early* -- a model to which our energy regulators and RTOs can aspire! (Thanks @AlaskaAir for no delays / getting me to Montana on time for a nice meal with my family.)

Does being on Alaska Flt 2222 mean that I am not landing until 2029, like certain @FERC orders of the same number?

In Memory of Alex Trebek Five years gone🕯️

& after reading the Safire column, one could go and dust off Tom Wolfe's RADICAL CHIC AND MAU-MAUING THE FLAK CATCHERS. A book that now reads as true as an Ed Banfield (cc @kevinrkosar) diagnosis of the weird recent period of a certain quadrant of civil society

There is something so irresistibly funny about the following quote re: Sierra Club's implosion, from the Times coverage. that I'd read a whole Safire or Bloom column on these two sentences: “That’s fine, Delia. But what do wolves have to do with equity, justice and inclusion?’"

Anyways, it will be interesting to see the utility's response to this complaint, and what the Oregon PUC does with this -- really the first big public blowup between a hyperscaler and a regulated utility. https://t.co/rjXzLtWBRE

And, actually, I do feel a little bad for Amazon. You pour money into these data centers for 4 years, you've already pay [redacted!] to the utility for infrastructure. And now the utility is also allegedly holding a couple *new* data centers hostage unless Amazon renegotiates the

Might various other arcane and arbitrary demands that aren't actually aligned to solid economic foundations take hold solely because of the monopoly's power in the relationship? Hmmmm.....

It is worth reflecting about how, if a monopoly can jack around Amazon like this, what it might do to the guy who is looking to get a new home or subdivision connected, or people wanting to get solar or storage or EVs into their homes, etc. -- the stuff that isn't likely to make

The details of the complaint in this part are heavily redacted, but it sounds like the utility ratcheted down demand or interrupted service at one data center, is refusing to provide any power to another developed data center, and has stalled out negotiations on two nascent ones

I imagine you can see what the problem is here, which is that who Amazon has beef with is by law the only game in town. And the owner of that game, who really wants this tax vig, has simply decided to ghost them (according to Amazon).

So that's the dispute on taxes. Ordinarily, embroiled in a dispute about this fun bit of arcana, a well-resourced company like Amazon would say "well, I will fight these guys over here, while I take my business to these guys over here who aren't jacking me around"

So again for those in the back: In the Bizarro World of regulated utilities, higher income taxes produce more cash flow for utilities. (high tax rate = more revenue in utility rates = bigger pool of potential cash flow via deductions like bonus depreciation.)

In a different arrangement, such as the data centers doing this work directly but to utility standards, there would not be any tax liability at all. In a competitive market, suppliers obviously would be willing to bargain around their actual tax expense. In any case, Amazon

Now I'd be sympathetic to the utility (and its other customers) if the tax costs were real and unavoidable. But let's not kid ourselves. The utility, after collecting this money, is going to make expenditures that are deductible from taxes. Indeed, the whole point of the payment