The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Mega-NOPR1
covers four topics: 1) The FERC's jurisdictional powers to
implement wholesale open access 2) The FERC's proposal for...
This final installment of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's series
on distributed energy resources investigates efficiency, the
environment, and generation displacement. Distributed energy
resources (DER) have been touted as a clean, efficient way to
generate electricity at end-use sites, potentially allowing the
exhaust heat to be put to good use as well. However, in a time
when new combined-cycle (CC) plants are being mothballed and
older plants retired because of high gas prices and lack of
demand, does it make environmental sense to use DER? Does DER
displace other, cleaner generation technologies, or does it
compete against older, dirtier power plants instead? If DER
systems are built, then older generating plants may be retired
sooner, removing some of the worst polluters. Or it may be that
DER does not directly compete against