Like a Jedi responding to changing events by striving to bring balance to the Force, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Chairman Jon Wellinghoff has been rapidly reshaping the formerly sclerotic electricity sector to make it responsive to new technologies.

Some of the sector’s fossil fuel-centric rules left a high barrier to entry for so-called variable resources: energy like wind and solar that are only created when the wind blows or the sun shines, unlike, say, a gas or nuclear power plant that generates electricity around the clock.

A year ago, Wellinghoff told me: “[North American Electric Reliability Corporation] projects in its 2010 Long-Term Reliability Assessment that approximately 60 percent of all new resources expected to be added to the bulk power system by 2019 will be new wind and solar resources.”

via New Federal Rules Boost Grid Access For Wind, Solar, Storage – Forbes.