Investor Owned Utility

The creation of solar energy requires little maintenance and solar electricity power plants produce zero emissions. Solar power plants use two different types of technologies: Concentrated solar power and Photovoltaic systems. Concentrated solar power plants, also known as “concentrated solar thermal”, uses solar thermal energy to make steam that is converted into electricity by a turbine. A photovoltaic system, also known as solar panels, generates electricity from sunlight. It is a device that converts light energy into electrical energy.

Electric Utility Industry: The electric utility industry is formed by three segments: generation, transmission and distribution. Securities and Exchange

Duke Energy is a natural monopoly. So, they don’t have much competition. The prices that utilities charge consumers are regulated by the government, which is called the rate of return. A Rate of Return is a form of price setting regulation where governments determine the fair price which is allowed to be charged by a monopoly(Investopia). The government does this to stabilize the interests for consumers and the utility companies by making sure that rates are high enough to deliver dependable services to consumers and to offer a adequate return on capital for Duke Energy and it’s industry peers. Subsequently, the rates are not so high that the consumers can’t afford the prices and ends up being unlawful.

Electric Utilities are a vital industry to the overall economy, and to our very way of life. Keeping the lights on, is for many people, the reason they go to work, that along with food, and other necessities. Therefore these companies serve a very important role, and just like other industries there is competition. Specifically, for our purposes, the electric utilities industry I’m going to focus on is the transmission of power from a generator, to a distribution center, another utilities company, or the final consumer. The key economic drivers, in this industry revolve, as always, around demand. Therefore consumption, number of households, price of electricity, manufacturing capacity and public capital investments are all derived from the demand coming from the end users, in the economy (IBISworld). These metrics are a result of a heavily regulated market, in which the consumers, and therefore its agent, the government, hold most of the power in this industry. Electric power transmission is a mature industry in the United States, and its projected growth over the next ten years is a modest 1.2% (Morningstar). This industry will be examined as a whole and then comparatively, as I inspect companies performing in this sector and their relative performance.

What makes electric utilities (Con Edison) monopolistic and why? Support your answer by referring to AT LEAST 2 FORCES outlined in MICHEAL PORTER’S Five Forces of Analysis

Escalating costs played a major role in the diminishing number of power plants in the United States. (Cohen, 1990). Plants completed in the 1970’s carried an average price tag of $170

Wind energy, one of the oldest forms of renewable energy used by humans, is produced simply by harnessing the power of the wind with wind turbines and generating electricity. Geothermal energy is energy from the heat of the Earth, and is drawn from locations with naturally heated water like hot water reservoirs and geysers or areas deep within the Earth accessed by drilling (NREL, "Learning About Renewable Energy"). Hydroelectric power, in simplest terms, uses the power of water rushing downwards to rotate a propeller attached to a generator that in turn produces electricity (Perlman). Another form of renewable energy is biomass, such as wood, biofuel, and bio-waste, which is burned to produce energy; however, it is not clean energy.

Our society today is ever more dependent upon electricity in all aspects of life. Keeping the power infrastructure throughout the United States secure and functioning properly should be considered a high priority for both private sector and government. Lacking properly functioning power caused by an outage has widespread impact not just on common conveniences being unavailable but also on critical areas such as emergency services, transportation, water distribution, communication and food production and storage.

Renewable energy: Under the Electricity Act 2003 and the National Tariff Policy 2006, the central and the state electricity regulatory commissions must purchase a certain percentage of grid-based power from renewable sources.

National Grid is an international electricity and natural gas company based in the UK and Northeastern US. It connects customers to energy consumers through its networks and works to create new, sustainable energy solutions for the future.

Also, some savings are achieved by using more efficient cooling technology to reduce grid purchases. The retrofit therefore reduces the total energy purchased from the grid, but it also modifies the hourly electrical demand profile. Both pieces of information are required to compute the savings, because it is assumed that the grid pricing is demand-sensitive, such that the price per kWh each month is a function of the load factor for that month. Load factor is defined on a monthly basis as the ratio of the average power consumption for the month divided by the peak hourly power consumption. The load factor measures the consistency of the demand over time, with high load factors indicating a more consistent demand that is less costly for the utility to provide. The monthly per kWh grid price is therefore inversely related to load factor.

Hallington Utilities Services is first introduced as a utility that distributes electrical power to customers in the municipality of Hallington. In the mid-1990s, the Ontario government decided it should move to deregulate the electrical power market because residents and businesses in Ontario were drastically overpaying for services and were considered the third-highest electricity generation rates in Canada, with no choice of suppliers. HUS was reorganized. It now responded to a Board of Directors. This Board adopted the vision: Excellence in customer

In 1831, scientist Michael Farday discovered the first form of electricity. He found that when a magnet moved inside a copper coil it created what is known as an electric current. This invention is known as a turbine generator. Even today, in full sized power stations this simple invention is still used and works very effectively. These power stations create mass amounts of energy to turn the turbines. Most of the time the energy is made from the heat, for example when coal is burned. More environmentally friendly power stations use wind or flowing water to turn these turbines. This is known as renewable energy because it will not run out, unlike when oil and coal are used.(3)

According to the case study written by Jurek, Bras, Guldberg, D’Arcy, Oh, and Biller, energy costs were steadily rising and were predicted to continue this trend going into the future. At the same time, utility companies were beginning to implement Smart Grid technologies to increase the efficiency of energy distribution. One resulting program to emerge from

Solar power harness the sun 's energy to create electricity. Solar energy assets are enormous and boundless, and they can be tackled anyplace that gets sunlight. The measure of solar radiation, otherwise called insolation, coming to the earth 's surface consistently is more than all the energy at present devoured by every single human activity yearly [1]. Various variables, including geographic area, time of day, and current climate conditions, all influence the measure of energy that can engage in for electricity creation or heating purposes.