Overall, he addressed every major concern concisely, clearly,  and without the expected political double-speak. Nice change from the past.

During the Great Depression, Howard Hughes was such a man.   He looked at the landscape and found the industries that would provide the next wave of growth.   Talking movies and aerospace.   He invested, built and thrived during the upswing.

Today, in materials science and gas fuels, in loosely coupled syntactic web services, in data analytics, in the small but creative endeavors of American citizens, these same opportunities exist.

Investors should be supporting these companies.   I have invested in many of them with my limited resources and continue to mine the Internet.  

These companies will reduce manmade CO2 and produce jobs.

Besides the high level of complexity of the power industry, it is important to understand the root cause of why President Barak Obama mentions “energy among the issues they need to keep working on.” The root cause is a flaw at outset of power restructuring. The flaw was not to accept that the Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) Framework was not longer useful, because its monopolistic business model of IOUs winning rate cases to state regulators was plain obsolete. There has been a need since EPAct 92 for business model innovations in the open market.

Power industry restructuring was set for wholesale competition, which resulted in congestion and price spikes, as the rule economy first (E1), power system performance second (P2), was applied. Soon enough a fix was found with the introduction of capacity markets, which essentially meant a counter reform towards the IOUs Framework.

Organized wholesale markets have been operating in several jurisdictions of North America with the E1P2 rule. Even less of those jurisdictions are actually implementing retail markets. The COMPETE Coalition seems to be happy that those retail market should depend on the corresponding wholesale markets.

The majority of states of the union have kept the IOUs Framework without such organized wholesale markets. That signals a failure of the reforms which are now more than a decade old.

Smart Grid designs based on the E1P2 rule suggest that every customer should have a smart meter in order to participate in the real-time market. Such a rule may induce an excessive investment which may be subject to early obsolescence, especially if the smart meters are the result of huge bets by state regulators.

The IOUs Framework incremental extensions based on the E1P2 rule is also the basis for IOUs and state officials for finding that DOE ceiling for grant funds are insufficient.

The Electricity Without Price Controls (EWPC) Framework is based on the reversed P1E2 rule. The performance first has its origin in the ultraquality imperative of system architecture of space flight vehicles, nuclear power stations, and complex industrial installations.

P1 is what allows the emerging whole power industry to be separated into a regulated high performing power system (with neither congestion nor price spikes) and an open market on the value chain, generation, retail, prosumer.

After operations planning, demand and supply commitments and security constraint spot pricing, in time and space, are set. Deviations at the real-time operations balancing market result in economic transactions that are the responsibility of the supply and demand wholesale market agents.

Under EWPC wholesale and retail markets mutually reinforce each other, without the need for capacity markets. Second generation retail markets concentrate on the development of the resources of the demand side to enable such reinforcement. Below, please find the 10 most recent EWPC Framework articles which try to answer many key issues going forward:

The Truly Smart Grid

It is now very easy to answer Mark Sardella, PE, Writer, Local Energy News, question Smart Grids: How Smart? Look at the most recent series of post under his article and you will also become aware where we should be heading.

Smart Grid: Can the U.S Waste Billions in Taxpayer Dollars?

The question "Can the U.S Waste Billions in Taxpayer Dollars?" should be in the mind of every participant in the Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Interim Roadmap Workshop, that will be...

On Cyber Spies Threats: Keep Public Wires Regulation and go for Energy Markets

Under Alex Yu Zheng’s, Smart Grid News.com, Blogging the Grid article Foreign Cyber-Spies Inject Spyware into U.S. Grid with Potential for Serious Damage, I posted the following comment: Bala...

DOE's WISE NOI for an FOA

Following the lead given by James Carson, I posted a comment under the SmartGrid.com featured article Smart Grid Stimulus Bill: DOE Snubs IOUs and Meters. This is what I wrote: I find the above dis...

U.S. CONGRESS, the COMPETE Coalition and Comprehensive Energy Legislation

This is in response to Mr. BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States, Earth Day call for comprehensive Energy Legislation, which the U.S. CONGRESS, the COMPETE Coalition and the general public ne...

A Question to the State Secretary at the Santo Domingo Digital Town Hall

Dear Secretary Clinton, Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question about the need for fundamental energy reform in the Americas. As a result of the California-Enron crisis, electricity reform...

No new source, no new generation, but just use more efficiently what we currently have

“Even as we deal with this crisis, we’ve got to think about the future. That is why we think it’s so important to invest in clean, renewable energy, to take action against climate ch...

Investor Owned Transporters Can’t be Providers of Last Resort

Under the highly recommended EnergyPulse article Smart Grids: How Smart?, I responded to Edward A. Reid, Jr. that as the IOUs framework is replaced, we need Investor Owned Transporters (IOTs) that are...

Smart Grid Requires Spot Pricing of Ultraquality Electricity

A wide audience should read the EnergyPulse article Smart Grids: How Smart?, by Mark Sardella, PE, Executive Director, Local Energy. First posted on the GMH Blog on April 14th, 2009 Hello Mark,...

Does DSI Achieve a Much Larger Potential than DSM?

Please look at the comment with questions to the EnergyPulse article Achievable Potential from Energy Efficiency and Demand Response Programs in the U.S.: 2010-2030 (please hit red hyperlinks), by Oma...