Now we can add a new kind of economic stimulus to the list of benefits of making one's home into an energy efficient one. According to an article in Washington Post, homeowners who invest to make their homes more energy efficient turn out to be better credit risk for banks to lend money. According to this article: A new study by the University of North Carolina suggests that the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Using a massive sample of 71,000 home loans from across the country tha... [More]

When you see an article about energy efficient lighting in the main page of NYTime online, I think it's safe to assume that the product is ready to go mainstream. Today's NYT has a lead item on LED bulbs ready to take over as the replacement for incandescent bulbs and in the process, knocking out the CFLs. The main reasons are the prices have been dropping steadily due to increased marketing and higher awareness amongst consumers of the long life and power savings characteristics of the LEDs ove... [More]

According to a recent survey released by industry consultancy, Black and Veatch, over 70% of utility industry respondents believe that energy pricies will rise significantly in the next five years. This means utilities either have to prepare for a serious backlash from their customers as they pass on these increases in the form of higher bills or focus on reducing consumption via aggressive promotion of DSM programs.  As both an industry member and a customer, we can safely predict th... [More]

New York Times is reporting that the Boards of both Duke Energy and Progress Energy have unanimously approved a deal for Duke to buy Progress. The deal values Progress at $13.7 billion and the resulting company to be called Duke Energy would be the largest in the US with revenues of $22.7 billion and over 7 million customers. Duke Energy has about 35,000 MW of electric generating capacity and Progress Energy has about 22,000 MW of generating capacity. The companies hope to complete the d... [More]

As we wrap up 2010, the topic that received the most coverage this year was "Smart Grid" - it looked like almost every business in the utility industry was involved in this market, irrespective of what their product or services offered were. Hope fully, we can now get into the actual work of converting this dream of a "seamlessly connected Smart World" into practical reality. That is going to need focused work on specific areas of the grid, various aspects of distribution services, intelligent p... [More]