by Dylan Brewer This June, New York City’s government and utility urged households to conserve electricity during an extreme heat wave with temperatures reaching 100 degrees F.[1] People were asked to set air conditioners to 76 degrees, to avoid using more than one air conditioning unit, and to delay using electricity-hungry appliances during peak cooling […]
In late April, a massive power outage swept across parts of Spain and Portugal. Within minutes, trains stopped, flights were grounded, and critical services were knocked offline. Even though most power was restored within 24 hours, the blackout was a wake-up call, showing just how one problem in a tightly connected grid can ripple outward […]
In “Wiring America,” EPIcenter affiliate Gaurav Doshi analyzes how Texas’s CREZ high-capacity transmission build-out curbed the market power of fossil-fuel generators. Using a two-stage empirical strategy, the study first shows that CREZ reduced wind curtailment, adding roughly 0.11 GWh of additional wind during peak hours and 0.22 GWh at the off-peak – and then demonstrates […]
This paper authored by EPIcenter affiliate Matt Oliver dicusses how pipeline congestion in the U.S. Rocky Mountain region creates sizable price wedges, or “basis differentials,” between closely linked hubs—Opal, WY, and Cheyenne, CO. As demand for transport approaches capacity on the 325-mile corridor (via CIG, WIC, and REX), secondary market scarcity rents drive the Cheyenne […]
In a world shifting toward renewable power generation, the way we connect our power grids may matter more than ever. Using data from 155 regions on five continents, this study authored by EPIcenter affiliate Constance Crozier shows that linking neighboring grids via high‐voltage direct current (HVDC) lines can replace—or drastically reduce—the need for expensive batteries. […]
This paper by EPIcenter affiliate Gaurav Doshi examines how Texas’s $6.8 billion CREZ transmission expansion catalyzed wind deployments in the West and Panhandle region. Employing a discrete choice framework, developers were found to be 20 percentage points more likely to locate in CREZ counties, implying a willingness to pay of roughly $2,808 per MW of […]
Residential rooftop solar adoption can paradoxically lead to higher total electricity consumption than expected because “free” PV electricity lowers household energy costs, prompting some additional usage. EPIcenter affiliate Oliver and his Georgia Tech colleague Toroghi propose an innovative method that pairs economic demand modeling with high-resolution GIS PV potential analysis to estimate this “direct rebound […]
Our electrical grid—already under stress from climate‐amplified storms and the push to renewables—is a critical lifeline. Yet outages are costly, and until now, our best measures of how much U.S. households are truly willing to pay to avoid losing power (their “value of lost load,” or VoLL) came from surveys and macroeconomic models, offering wildly […]
A recent study by Matthew E. Oliver from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his co-authors, Juan Moreno-Cruz from the University of Waterloo and Kenneth Gillingham from Yale University, delves into the solar rebound effect. The “solar rebound effect” is a phenomenon where households with residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems end up consuming more electricity in response to greater solar energy […]
Climate-driven wildfires are increasingly ignited by overhead power lines, prompting utilities to deploy preemptive Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). Equitably Allocating Wildfire Resilience Investments for Power Grids studies how the Biden Administration’s Justice40 mandate (40 % of federal infrastructure benefits to disadvantaged communities via the CEJST index) actually plays out in a Texas case study […]
In a study by a Georgia Tech economist that could help inform future energy policy, half the participants cranked their thermostats despite knowing exactly how much each extra degree would cost them. Prices are typically the first tool used to get people to save energy, noted Dylan Brewer, assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Economics. […]
People using energy-efficient smart thermostats are willing to sacrifice comfort and control to save relatively small amounts of energy that could add up if enough people sign on, a Georgia Tech economist reported in a recent study. With federal and state energy policies targeting aggressive decarbonization in the next 15 years, smart technologies have the […]
“Who breathes cleaner air when Americans put solar panels on their roofs? Using plant-level emissions data, an air-pollution transport model, and census-block demographics, Bobby Harris (Georgia Tech)—the study’s EPIcenter affiliate— and Travis E. Dauwalter (Artera Services) show that today’s rooftop solar fleet delivers $0.77 in environmental benefits per person annually and disproportionately benefits higher-income households. […]
Workplace EV charging congestion threatens corporate decarbonisation targets. Asensio, Apablaza, Lawson and Walsh (Georgia Tech; EPIcenter affiliate Omar I. Asensio) examine whether a tiered price of $1 per hour after 4 hours and injunctive “charging-etiquette” emails can curb charger over-stay across 105 stations and 84 employees. High-frequency session data are analyzed with sharp and dynamic […]
Federal housing block grants may be an untapped tool for energy-efficiency policy. EPIcenter affiliate Omar Asensio and his coauthors Churkina, Rafter and O’Hare (Georgia Tech, Harvard Business School and Georgia State University) link 5.9 million monthly utility bills with 16 years of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME Investment Partnerships projects in Albany, GA […]
How can a country minimize long-term power-system costs when future electricity demand is uncertain? Yuang Chen (PhD ISyE Georgia Tech and now assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong at Shenzhen), Beste Basciftci (PhD ISyE Georgia Tech and now assistant professor at the University of Iowa) and Georgia Tech’s Valerie M. Thomas (an […]
When a hurricane is coming, can a city with lots of electric cars top-up all those batteries fast enough without frying the local power grid? Three Georgia Tech engineers—Alejandro Owen Aquino, Samuel Talkington and EPIcenter affiliate Daniel Molzahn—built a computer model to find out. Using realistic-but-not-real data from Greensboro, North Carolina, the model shows that […]
Across the country, solar farms have experienced rapid growth, supported by advancements in technology, cost reductions, and policy initiatives such as state-level renewable portfolio standards and tax credits. As shown in Map 1, roughly 18% of ground-mounted PV facilities in the U.S. were installed between 2021 and 2023, with a notable portion of these projects […]
To gain a deeper understanding of the current energy landscape in Georgia and the southeast, this blog series examines emerging topics in the energy sector, provides timely information on key energy challenges and opportunities, and discusses how Georgia and the southeast are adapting to meet growing energy needs while embracing sustainable energy goals and supporting […]
Listen to the Curtailment 101 podcast: EPIcenter affiliates Gaurav Doshi and Matthew Oliver’s article in The Energy Forum discusses the why grid operators occasionally curtail wind and solar output when transmission capacity is insufficient or demand is low, and the economic and environmental impacts of these decisions. Congestion-based curtailment arises when the transmission network cannot […]