- Industry: Energy
- Number of terms: 9078
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
California’s primary energy policy and planning agency
Public interest goals of electric utility regulation include: 1) inter-and intra-class and intergenerational equity); 2) the equal treatment of equals (horizontal equity); 3)balancing long- and short-term goals that have the potential to affect intergenerational balance; 4)protecting against the abuse of monopoly power; and 5) general protection of the health and welfare of the citizens of the state, nation, and world. Environmental and other types of social costs are subsumed under the equity and health and welfare responsibilities.
Industry:Energy
Commercial method used for large-scale storage of power. During off-peak times, excess power is used to pump water to a reservoir. During peak times, the reservoir releases water to operate hydroelectric generators.
Industry:Energy
One quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) British thermal units (Btus). An amount of energy equal to 170 million barrels of oil. Total U.S. consumption of all forms of energy is (in the 1990s) about 83 quads in an average year.
Industry:Energy
QFs are non-utility power producers that often generate electricity using renewable and alternative resources, such as hydro, wind, solar, geothermal or biomass (solid waste). QFs must meet certain operating, efficiency, and fuel-use standards set forth by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). If they meet these FERC standards, utilities must buy power from them. QFs usually have long-term contracts with utilities for the purchase of this power, which is among the utility's highest-priced resources.
Industry:Energy
Under PURPA, QFs were allowed to sell their electric output to the local utility at avoided cost rates. To become a QF, the independent power supplier had to produce electricity with a specified fuel type (cogeneration or renewables), and meet certain ownership, size, and efficiency criteria established by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Industry:Energy
A unit of measure of absorbed radiation. Acronym for radiation absorbed dose. One rad equals 100 ergs of radiation energy per gram of absorbing material.
Industry:Energy
Energy transferred by the exchange of electromagnetic waves from a hot or warm object to one that is cold or cooler. Direct contact with the object is not necessary for the heat transfer to occur.
Industry:Energy
The flow of energy across open space via electromagnetic waves such as light. Passage of heat from one object to another without warming the air space in between.
Industry:Energy
The steam-Rankine cycle employing steam turbines has been the mainstay of utility thermal electric power generation for many years. The cycle, as developed over the years uses superheat, reheat and regeneration. Modern steam Rankine systems operate at a cycle top temperature of about 1,073 degrees Celsius with efficiencies of about 40 percent.
Industry:Energy
