San Diego Gas & Electric shareholders want more autonomy when it comes to weighing on whether cities like San Diego should adopt an increasingly popular program that puts government officials — instead of a utility — in charge of buying and selling power.
The commission's decision is well beyond the bounds of the legislature's intent and its own authority Allison Torres, communications manager with SDG&E
In August, the utility became the first in the state to get approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to create a shareholder-funded marketing divisions expressly allowed to lobby against so-called community choice aggregations or CCAs.
The public energy programs give elected officials the authority to purchase energy, from solar operations to wind farms to natural gas plants. Under the arrangement, a local utility continues to operate the electrical grid but no longer controls what sources of power to buy on behalf of ratepayers in a particular city or county.
In a request for rehearing filed with the commission this week, SDG&E challenged the rules regulators laid out under which shareholders would be allowed to lobby against the formation of CCAs. It argued the commission’s framework is too onerous and exceeds what’s allowable under the state law, which prohibits utilities from using ratepayer money to publicly criticize the energy programs.
“The commission's decision is well beyond the bounds of the legislature's intent and its own authority,” Allison Torres, communications manager with SDG&E, said in an email. “It imposes conditions that overreach the limits of the CPUC's own rules.” continued…
first published week of: 09/26/2016
Swiss voters feel the country needs more time to transition to renewable power.
Swiss voters rejected a plan to force their government to accelerate the country’s exit from nuclear energy in a referendum Sunday, turning down an initiative that would have seen the last plant shut in 2029.
A majority of cantons (states) voted against the plan. Under Switzerland’s direct democracy system, proposals need a majority of both cantons and votes to pass.
The plan promoted by the Green party would have meant closing three of Switzerland’s five nuclear plants next year, with the last shutting in 2029. Polls ahead of the referendum had shown a tight race, but a projection for SRF public television showed the initiative failing by a clear margin of 55% to 45%. continued…
first published week of: 12/05/2016
Southern Arizona’s biggest electric provider is seeking bids for design and construction of a new solar facility to provide power for more than 21,000 homes.
Tucson Electric Power says the new solar array new facility would help it achieve its renewable energy goals and would begin producing power in early 2019.
TEP says the new facility would have up to 100 megawatts of capacity and could be built in the Tucson area or a location tied into existing transmission facilities. The company also is evaluating proposals for a 100-megawatt wind-powered facility that would be built by a project partner.
TEP said previously it was looking for wind-powered projects that could tie into the company’s transmission facilities located in the Four Corners region and along the Arizona-New Mexico line. continued…
first published week of: 11/07/2016
Florida Power & Light Co. Wins National ReliabilityOne Excellence Award for Second Straight Year at PA Consulting Group's 16th Annual Awards Ceremony
PA Consulting Group has announced that the reliability performance of the nation's power utilities improved for the fourth consecutive year.
PA introduced the findings at the 16th Annual ReliabilityOne Awards ceremony at which Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) won the National ReliabilityOne Excellence Award for the second straight year. PA also released next generation utility trends and honored eight additional utilities.
The energy industry has faced upheaval over the last several years driven by new technologies, customer demands and regulatory intervention. With the reliability of the electric system absolutely critical to the economy and to the lives of customers, new challenges are emerging for industry leaders. In the face of these challenges, top performing utilities must identify opportunities to improve reliability, storm response and customer engagement while keeping costs and rates under control. continued…
first published week of: 11/21/2016
UK energy regulator Ofgem has approved plans for a 1.1 billion pound under-sea power cable between Britain and France, developer Aquind Limited said on Wednesday.
The approval means the privately-funded 2 gigawatt (GW) cable could start importing power from 2022 from northern France's nuclear-powered electricity grid to southern England, where it could power up to four million homes.
Britain plans to build more power links with Europe to avert an electricity shortfall by the early 2020s as coal plants close and indigenous North Sea oil and gas production declines. continued…
first published week of: 09/19/2016
The city of Idaho Falls has again received reports of a scam targeting Idaho Falls residents.
An Idaho Falls man last week received a call from someone posing as a City Utilities representative threatening to disconnect electric service to the man’s home if he didn’t pay his utility bill over the phone with a credit card, a city news release said.
Similar scams have been reported in recent years but this one was different in that the victim said the caller provided the victim’s city utility account number, Idaho Falls Power customer relations supervisor Matt Evans said in an email. The victim went to Walgreens and got a prepaid card to pay the scammer.
City officials urge customers to take steps to protect their account numbers and other sensitive information. continued…
first published week of: 10/24/2016
But not everyone is in favor—including the Washington State Tree Fruit Association.
Washington lawmakers have tried and failed in recent years to make polluters pay for their carbon emissions to fight climate change. Now, voters will get to decide.
An initiative on the November ballot asks voters whether the state should impose the nation’s first direct carbon tax on the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline.
Sponsors say residents have a moral responsibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and a carbon tax is the best way to do it. The tax encourages businesses to conserve or switch to clean energy by making fossil fuels more expensive, and it makes the tax system fairer by using the revenues to reduce other taxes, they say. continued…
first published week of: 10/17/2016
The interactive navigation app Waze, with its 65 million active monthly users, has partnered with Esri, which provides geographic information systems (GIS) software to 25,000 state, local and national governments. While the combination isn’t quite the vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication that will enable autonomous vehicles in the future, it is a kind of app-to-infrastructure system that improves traffic and creates more reliable maps for drivers right now.
This isn’t anything new for Waze. It’s been running the Connected Citizens Program (CCP) since 2014, a free two-way data exchange with its municipal partners. It just announced its hundredth partner recently, Transport for London, but it works with cities around the globe, from Jakarta to Rio de Janeiro to Montreal.
“Esri is a leading GIS software provider,” said Adam Fried, new business development manager at Waze. “Any time we see an opportunity to augment our data, we do it.”
With so many municipalities already using Esri, it was easy to add Waze data to cities’ current mapping software. Fried said one of the biggest barriers Waze had encountered with municipalities was resource constraints — time, money and technology. Teaming up with Esri “meets our partners where they are,” Fried said, without having to invest in specialized software or training. continued…
first published week of: 10/17/2016
From bio-solar cells and floating solar farms to energy harvesting trees and transmission of power from space, the future looks quite bright for renewable energy
1. Bio-solar cells
For the first time ever, researchers connected nine biological-solar (bio-solar) cells into a bio-solar panel and continuously produced electricity from the panel and generated the most wattage of any existing small-scale bio-solar cells.
Last year, the group took steps towards building a better bio-solar cell by changing the materials used in anodes and cathodes (positive and negative terminals) of the cell and also created a miniature microfluidic-based single-chambered device to house the bacteria instead of the conventional, dual-chambered bio-solar cells. continued…
first published week of: 06/13/2016
Beginning as early as June 2, troops and families living in Air Force privatized housing will no longer receive as generous utility rebates — and some who use more power than average may have to pay.
The Air Force said in a Friday release that it will soon start basing its utility allowances for privatized housing on monthly meter readings. About 75 percent of residents are expected to either be billed up to $8 a month for using more energy than average for similar houses in their area, have no bill or rebate, or get rebates of up to $8 if they use less power than average.
Under the old system — which has been in effect for the past 13 years — the Air Force based its privatized housing utility allowances on a five–year rolling average, with a 10 percent “buffer”that gave residents more leeway to go over the average. But in a Friday interview, Jennifer Miller, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, said that meant roughly 80 percent of residents got refunds of varying amounts on their power usage. continued…
first published week of: 05/23/2016