| monsoonal | Adj. describes a climate pattern with a wind system that changes direction with the seasons; this pattern is dominant over the arabian sea and southeast asia. |
| food chain/food web | All the interactions of predator and prey, included along with the exchange of nutrients into and out of the soil. these interactions connect the various members of an ecosystem, and describe how ... |
| nutrient cycling | All the processes by which nutrients are transferred from one organism to another. for instance, the carbon cycle includes uptake of carbon dioxide by plants, ingestion by animals, and respiration... |
| pollinator | Animal which carries pollen from one seed plant to another, unwittingly aiding the plant in its reproduction. common pollinators include insects, especially bees, butterflies, and moths, birds, an... |
| autotroph | - Any organism that is able to manufacture its own food. most plants are autotrophs, as are many protists and bacteria. contrast with consumer. autotrophs may be photoautotrophic, using light en...
автотроф; |
| detrivore | Any organism which obtains most of its nutrients from the detritus in an ecosystem. |
| omnivore | Literally, an organism that will eat anything. refers to animals who do not restrict their diet to just plants or other animals. |
| biological/biotic factors | Living factors such as decomposers, scavengers and predators. |
| kelp forest | Marine ecosystem dominated by large kelps. these forests are restricted to cold and temperate waters, and are most common along the western coasts of continents. kelp forests first appeared in the... |
| dessication | Mummification. |
| generalist | - Organism which can survive under a wide variety of conditions, and does not specialize to live under any particular set of circumstances.
- Utilizes resources as they are available, e...
|
| halophile | - Organism which lives in areas of high salt concentration. these organisms must have special adaptations to permit them to survive under these conditions.
- Organism that depends on hi...
галофил; |
| nitrogen fixation | - The conversion of gaseous nitrogen into a form usable by plants. ususally by bacteria.
- Bacterial biochemical pathways that incorporate inorganic nitrogen gas into organic forms more...
фиксация азота; |
| biomes | The world`s major communities, classified according to the predominant vegetation and characterized by adaptations of organisms to that particular environment. more? |
| demand charge | A fee based on the peak amount of electricity used during the billing cycle. |
| power purchase agreement (ppa) | A financing option for residential solar in which a solar company owns (and installs, monitors, maintains) your solar panels; you pay for electricity. with ppas, you avoid the high upfront costs o... |
| load center or load pocket | A geographical area where large amounts of power are drawn by end-users. |
| public good | - A good (or a service) that will not be produced and delivered solely by the free market. economists call these “public goods” because the public consumes them, but they do not solely benefit a...
|
| megawatt (mw) | - A megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts or 1 million watts.
- 1,000 kilowatts, or 1 million watts; standard measure of electric power plant generating capacity.
- A measurement of ...
|
| independent system operator (iso) | - A neutral and independent organization with no financial interest in generating facilities that administers the operation and use of the transmission system. isos exercise final authority over...
|
| performance based incentive (pbi) | A payment or rebate paid based on actual energy production, compared to a ufi, on a $/kwh basis. a pbi benefits those with larger solar power systems. |
| up-front incentive (ufi) | A payment or rebate up front for installing solar panels. |
| bottleneck facility | - A point on the electric system, such as a transmission line, through which all electricity must pass to get to its intended buyers. if there is limited capacity at this point, some priorities ...
|
| renewable energy certificate (rec) | A rec is the property right to the environmental benefits associated with generating renewable electricity. for instance, homeowners who generate solar electricity are credited with 1 solar rec fo... |
| silicon (si) | - A semiconducting material found in most solar cells. it absorbs photons in sunlight and creates energy.
- A semi-metallic chemical element that makes an excellent semiconductor materi...
|
| vertically integrated monopoly | A single entity (provider) which performs all of the basic functions of production, transportation and delivery. for example, in the electric industry a vertically integrated electric utility perf... |
| interconnected system | - A system consisting of two or more individual electric systems that have connecting tie lines and whose operations are synchronized.
- A number energy companies linked together by a c...
объединенная энергосистема; |
| biofuels | - Alcohols, ethers, esters, and other chemicals made from raw biological material such as herbaceous and woody plants, agricultural and forestry residues, and a large portion of municipal solid ...
|
| afv | Alternative fuel vehicle |
| combined cycle | An electric generating technology in which electricity and process steam is produced from otherwise lost waste heat exiting from one or more combustion turbines. the exiting heat is routed to a co... |
| epbb (expected performance-based buy-down) | An epbb is a type of up-front incentive based on an estimate of your solar system’s expected performance. the performance estimate is based on system size, geographic location, orientation at time... |
| performance based regulation (pbr) | - Any rate setting mechanism that attempts to link rewards (generally profits) to desired results or targets. pbr sets rates, or components of rates, for a period of time based on external indic...
|
| parallel path flow | - As defined by nerc, this refers to the actual flow of electric power on an electric system’s transmission facilities resulting from scheduled electric power transfers between two other electri...
|
| reserve margin | - Capacity over and above anticipated peak loads, maintained for the purpose of providing operational flexibility and for preserving system reliability. reserve margins cover for planned and unp...
|
| co 2 | Carbon dioxide |
| c-bed (community-based energy development) | C-bed works toward renewable energy development in a way that optimizes local economic development and environmental benefits. |
| property assessed clean energy (pace) | Cities are beginning to offer pace programs which provides a loan for your solar panels. the program pays for the panels and you pay for the solar system on your property tax bill, over approximat... |
| investor owned utility (iou) | Common term for a privately owned (shareholder owned) gas or electric utility regulated by the minnesota public utilities commission (referred to in statutes as a “public utility”). |
| local distribution company (ldc) | Common term for a privately-owned natural gas utility that provides retail natural gas services to end use customers and is usually regulated by the puc. |
| unbundling | - Disaggregating utility service into its basic components and offering each component separately for sale with separate rates for each component. for example in electric service, generation, tr...
функциональное разделение; |
| eere | Energy efficiency & renewable energy, u.s. department of energy |
| universal service | - Energy service sufficient for basic needs (an evolving bundle of basic services) available to and affordable by virtually all members of the population.
- A policy of making a product...
универсальная услуга; |
| societal benefits charge (sbc) | Funding for programs that provide benefits to society, such as low-income, energy efficiency, and renewable energy programs |
| weather normalized information | Information adjusted to remove fluctuation due to changes in weather. |
| mapp | Mid-continent area power pool. |
| neg and nem | Net energy generation and net energy metering; when producing electricity, neg is the total electricity you produce minus the electricity you use from the grid. nem means that the electricity you ... |
| no x | Nitrogen oxides |
| bulk power supply | - Often this term is used interchangeably with wholesale power supply. in broader terms, it refers to the aggregate of electric generating plants, transmission lines, and related-equipment. the ...
|
| wholesale competition | Power producers competing to sell their power to a variety of distribution companies. |
| dsm (demand side management) | Programs to influence the amount or timing of customers’ energy use. |
| public interest goals | - Public interest goals of utility regulation include: 1) inter-and intra-class and intergenerational equity); 2) the equal treatment of equals (horizontal equity); 3) balancing long- and short-...
цели общественного интереса; |
| purpa | Public utility regulatory policies act of 1978. |
| power authorities | Quasi governmental agencies that perform all or some of the functions of a public utility. |
| regional reliability councils (rrc) | Regional reliability councils were organized after the 1965 northeast blackout to coordinate reliability practices and avoid or minimize future outages. they are voluntary organizations of transmi... |
| renewable resources | - Renewable energy resources are naturally replenishable, but flow-limited. they are virtually inexhaustible in duration but limited in the amount of energy that is available per unit of time. s...
возобновляемые ресурсы; |
| solar renewable energy certificate (srec) | See rec, renewable energy certificate |
| rps (renewable portfolio standard) | See res, renewable energy standard |
| peak load or peak demand | - The electric load that corresponds to a maximum level of electric demand within a specified time period, usually a year.
- The demand or load representing the maximum level of electri...
|
| federal energy regulatory commission (ferc) | - The federal energy regulatory commission regulates the price, terms and conditions of power sold in interstate commerce and regulates the price, terms and conditions of all transmission servic...
|
| investment tax credit (itc) | The federal itc is a 30% tax credit for installing a solar system in your home. you can apply this credit to your tax bill in the following spring. |
| production tax credit (ptc) | The federal ptc is a per-kilowatt-hour tax credit for generating electricity, for a certain period of the solar system’s operation. those who are less interested in ptcs can apply for an itc, and ... |
| electric energy | The generation or use of electric power by a device over a period of time, expressed in kilowatt-hours (kwh), megawatt-hours (mwh), or gigawatt-hours (gwh). |
| real time pricing | The instantaneous pricing of electricity based on the cost of the electricity available for use at the time the electricity is demanded by the customer. |
| department or doc | The minnesota department of commerce. |
| obligation to serve | - The obligation of a utility to provide nondiscriminatory electric service to any customer who seeks that service, and is willing to pay the rates set for that service. by law, utilities have t...
|
| commodity price | The portion of a natural gas sales or transportation rate based upon the volume actually shipped or used. |
| time-of-use (tou) rates | The pricing of delivered electricity based on the estimated cost of electricity during a particular time block. time-of-use rates are usually divided into three or four time blocks per twenty-four... |
| long range planning | The process of forecasting long term loads, determining a reasonable set of potential resources to meet these loads (including reduction of loads through energy efficiency), analyzing the costs (s... |
| wholesale power market | - The purchase and sale of electricity from generators to resellers (who sell to retail customers and/or other resellers) along with the ancillary services needed to maintain reliability and pow...
оптовый рынок электроэнергии; |
| minnesota public utilities commission (commission or puc) | The state agency with regulatory jurisdiction over certain minnesota utilities. |
| gigawatt-hour (gwh) | The unit of energy equal to that expended in one hour at a rate of one billion watts. one gwh equals 1,000 megawatt-hours. |
| megawatt-hour (mwh) | The unit of energy equal to that expended in one hour at a rate of one million watts. one mwh equals 3,414,000 btus. |
| transmitting utility (transco) | This is a regulated entity that owns, and may construct and maintain, wires used to transmit wholesale power. it may or may not handle the power dispatch and coordination functions. it is regulate... |
| electric system losses | Total electric energy losses in the electric system. losses are primarily due to electric resistance within transmission system lines and transformers. |
| power pool | - Two or more interconnected electric systems planned and operated to supply power for their combined demand requirements.
- An association of energy utilities that coordinate their ope...
|
| energy efficiency | - Using less energy (electricity and/or natural gas) to perform the same function at the same level of quality. programs designed to use energy more efficiently
- This can be defined in...
|
| alternative compliance payment (acp) | Utilities that have to comply with rps requirements but find srecs to be scarce or unavailable can provide an alternative payment (i.e. $300/mwh) |
