Source: Hawaii PUC The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) announced four major decisions and orders today that collectively provide key policy, resource planning, and operational directives to the Hawaiian Electric Companies (HECO Companies). The orders require the HECO Companies to develop and implement major improvement action plans to aggressively pursue energy cost reductions, proactively respond...

Source: PostBulletin.com  Xcel Energy issued a press release Wednesday declaring that it had achieved a milestone when 46 percent of customers’ electricity needs in the Upper Midwest were met by wind energy at 3 a.m. Sunday. That’s an all-time high for Xcel, which recently was named the nation’s top wind power provider for the 10th...

Storage is cool. It's so ingrained in our daily lives that it's invisible. From the pantry closet and fridge storing our food to fuel tanks in our homes and cars, storage gives us the advantage to have something when we need it. It's there waiting to be used. So, doesn't it make a lot of sense to store excess power from photovoltaics and other distributed generation resources to provide backup during outages? And, wouldn't storage change the intermittent nature of PV on cloudy days and at night into a more dispatchable resource? Couldn’t it also provide other grid services to help maintain power quality and reliability?

Massachusetts joins a handful of other leading states in greatly improving their interconnection procedures, making it easier for small renewable energy systems to connect to the distribution grid, without compromising safety or quality.