Can Utilities Be Held Financially Liable For Outages?

In the aftermath of recent power outages that saw as much as 20% of the population of the state of Michigan without power, this article outlines some ideas on what specific things we should be asking about or thinking about in trying to hold utilities accountable.

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Terrorists Blew Up Power Infrastructure This Weekend. The Media Barely Noticed.

To be fair, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on these days. The wealthiest man in the world, with

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Better Utility Regulation: How We Can Get Out Of This Mess

Too much regulation restricts innovation. But too little regulation does the same, and this is what we see in the crumbling infrastructure of Michigan, where regulators are asleep at the wheel in the name of a “business-friendly regulatory” environment that, as it turns out, is neither terribly regulatory nor terribly business-friendly.

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Debt or Asset? How Utility Shutoffs Are About To Be A Big Problem.

Springtime and mounting debt related to COVID19 means utility shutoffs are coming. At least probably. Here are some ideas for how we can fix our broken systems for utility billing– and how we subsidize utilities through programs like LIHEAP without actually moving the needle on energy poverty.

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EV Charging Infrastructure: From Demand To Reality

One of our readers asked us to write a piece about how electric vehicle chargers even get installed at scale.

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