An article I wrote about the recently concluded NYPSC et al v. NYISO case, regarding demand response participation in wholesale capacity markets, is online at Greentech Media here.
The big question for me and Peak Power is: how do you shift the discussion on demand response past largely hollow "free markets forever" rhetoric and actually encourage investment in demand-shifting and other behind-the-meter resources, especially when utilities and power producers have a lot more information and control of the system than the decentralized alternatives?
The article gets at a particularly egregious interpretation of market rules by FERC to protect conventional power incumbents, but I think there's a lot more that can be done: state regulatory policy and incentives, NYISO rules, and especially longer-term building owner approaches toward grid optimization. All of these elements loop back to battery storage, AMI, the true cost of solar, and efficient use of public funds to transition the grid.
Hopefully this is a way to call attention to that broader effort.
Thanks to Stephen Lacey and Eric Wesoff at GTM for the airtime, and all the folks who read drafts of this thing (Joe Goldstein, Nick Lombardi, Evan Berger in particular).