As Key Biscayne leaders consider a plan to bury the village’s power and telephone lines, they learned Tuesday what they’ve spent so far: about $500,000 to engineering firm Kimley-Horn and another $100,000 to Raftelis, which is developing an assessment methodology.
Kimley-Horn officials say the project will cost $46 million in three phases. The firm is hoping to be selected to oversee the project, but Village Council members had many questions. Even so, the council scheduled a vote April 9 for up to another $350,000 to pay for a binding estimate from Florida Power and Light and a survey.With the numbers mounting, some council members’ frustration was evident.
“I will not pay any more taxpayers’ money, not one cent more,” for further consulting, said Council Member Luis Lauredo.Council Member Ed London took issue with the phased approach, and also said he preferred a “design-build” methodology for hiring contractors instead of using Kimley-Horn to supervise the work.
Design-build “in most cases is far superior, it’s far quicker, it’s more economical, and of course, the problem is, it eliminates people like you,” London said to lead Kimley-Horn representative Josh Horning.
Read full story at KeyNews…
first published week of: 04/01/2019
Utilities' integrated resource plans offer a snapshot into how they are preparing for coal plant retirements, battery storage and other long-term shifts in their generation portfolios.
( Wikipedia (Florida coal-fired plant); Arizona Public Service Co. (Arizona battery storage); Daxis/Flickr (Texas wind farm) )
The next decade's electric utility is taking shape today in the form of plans, sometimes thousands of pages, plopped into the laps of state regulators nationwide.Like snowflakes, each of these integrated resource plans (IRPs) — which outline how utilities intend to meet power demand cost-effectively — is unique.
Not all states require them. And the almost three dozen states that do each has distinct requirements and processes for the plans, which look 10 to 20 years into the future.
But collectively, the IRPs provide a unique window into where power companies think the nation's electricity mix is headed. Among the trends: Electric vehicles may have little influence on power demand in the next decade; competition between natural gas and renewables is on the upswing; and battery storage could become less costly. In some locations, coal plants may shutter faster than expected.
"IRPs are very important. They're identifying utilities' preferred plans to meet their capacity needs over the long term," said Coley Girouard, who follows state planning processes for Advanced Energy Economy.
"We've seen IRPs change recently. In the past, they've focused just on traditional baseload resources and supply-side resources," he said.The IRPs themselves don't grant authority to build or retire power plants or raise rates. Those decisions are made separately in rate cases and other regulatory proceedings.What many of the plans do is highlight an accelerating transition to cleaner, more flexible energy resources. They also expose tensions created by that shift, especially in states with new 100% clean energy targets and in those phasing out their coal fleets.
Read full story at E&E News…
first published week of: 08/26/2019
Solar advocates are pushing Alabama regulators to stop a major utility from charging customers for linking solar power resources back to the grid.
( Roland Balik / U.S. Air Force )
The utility, in defending the $5-per-kilowatt charge, says “there is a cost” to supplying backup power to solar customers.
Facing pushback from customers, Alabama Power Co. staunchly defended charging rooftop solar users an extra fee on the grounds that the electric company is required to supply them with backup power at any time.
Environmental and consumer advocates have countered the utility’s surcharge is hurting rooftop solar’s growth and called for scaling back the fee during a morning hearing before the Alabama Public Service Commission last week.
The nonprofit Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP) and two Alabama Power customers have challenged the PSC’s 2013 decision to approve that surcharge. The tariff of $5 per kilowatt-month dramatically cuts into the savings that rooftop customers receive by using solar, said lawyers representing the customers and GASP.
Natalie Dean, Alabama Power’s regulatory pricing manager, said those customers need more from the utility — backup power for when they can’t get electricity from the sun — and that comes with a price.
“They have requested the company to provide a service to them, and there is a cost to that,” she said.
Dean said those charges are consistent with Alabama law and a decades-old federal law called the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). Broadly, PURPA was designed to encourage electricity from alternative sources and requires utilities to purchase energy from small-scale developers.
Read full story at Energy News…
first published week of: 12/02/2019
Alabama Power has one of the most successful economic development teams in the country, according to a new report from Site Selection Magazine.
The economic development publication recognized the 20 U.S. utilities with the best track record for recruiting and expanding industry last year.
For Alabama Power, the magazine cited the $2.1 billion in new capital investment and the 4,472 jobs created by projects the power company assisted with last year.
Site Selection also noted the work Alabama Power has devoted to community and workforce development beyond the traditional recruitment and expansion efforts of an economic development department.
Patrick Murphy, vice president of Marketing and Economic Development at Alabama Power, said there’s a reason for that – economic development is not just a department at Alabama Power.
“Economic development is at the core of what Alabama Power is as a company,” Murphy said. “In reality, our entire company works every day to better the lives and create opportunities for the people in our state.”
Read full story at Alabama Newscenter…
first published week of: 09/09/2019
Alabama Power: Customers on Hook for Costs of Closing Coal Plant
Alabama Power last week said its customers will see higher bills in order for the utility to repay about $740 million in costs related to the upcoming closure of one of its coal-fired power plants.
Southern Company, the parent of Alabama Power, in a recent regulatory document filing said it plans to recover investment costs from the William Crawford Gorgas Electric Generating Plant through customers’ electric bills. The plant is located in Walker County near Parrish, Alabama.
Read full story at Powermag…
first published week of: 03/04/2019
A Montgomery, Alabama-based electric authority announced that it has completed a deal to develop what it says will be one of the largest solar power arrays in the state.
The Alabama Municipal Electric Authority said Wednesday that Lightsource BP will finance, build and own the $125 million solar facility and deliver energy to AMEA under a 20-year power purchase agreement.
The project will deploy more than 350,000 solar panels over 800 rural acres in rural Montgomery County when it is completed in 2021.
Read full story at Tuscaloosa News…
first published week of: 06/03/2019
Ameren Illinois officials are asking the public to properly dispose of Mylar balloons, as they can cause outages when tangled in power lines.
In a news release, Ameren said the balloons are metallic and conduct electricity, which results in surges and shorts that can knock out power, start fires and significantly damage the company's electric grid.
Read full story at Herald&Review…
first published week of: 06/10/2019
To thrive in the grid of the future, we must leverage analytics to move from good to great.
As a kid growing up in Wyoming, I played every sport and, being from a small town, was considered good at nearly all I played. My mom knew I needed to work much harder and be more disciplined if I were to be successful. To help humble and level-set me, she delivered some frank feedback that has stuck with me for more than 30 years and changed my view on life. She said “Mark, you are good at everything, and you don’t have to work too hard to be good. However, you are not great at anything.” She then quickly reeled off excellence exhibited by my great siblings (there are seven of us including me), one brother was a fifth-degree black belt, another was getting his PhD in mathematics, and so on down the line.
It took me years to grasp what she was telling me, but I came to realize if you want to be great at something, you need to focus and dedicate yourself to the mastering the skills required. In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell gave us the 10,000-Hour Rule. To achieve greatness requires time and commitment.
Utilities continue to be pressed to drive out O&M costs from their business — both from shareholders and from regulators. These same companies are also expected to increase reliability, power quality, and be more customer-intimate. How can both divergent priorities happen at the same time? It’s the classic Gordian Knot, asking us to do so much more with fewer and fewer resources.
Read full story at T&D World…
first published week of: 07/08/2019
State regulators have extended a moratorium on new natural-gas power plants until August.
The Arizona Daily Star reports the Arizona Corporation Commission on Wednesday voted to extend until Aug. 1 a previous order effectively banning Tucson Electric Power Co. and other state-regulated power companies from buying or constructing new gas-fired plants with generating capacities of 150 megawatts or more.
Read full story at The News Tribune…
first published week of: 02/11/2019
The Tubbs Fire hit Santa Rosa, California in October 2017; it burned 36,000 acres, destroyed 5,600 structures and killed at least 22. It was considered the worst fire in state history until 2018 when the Camp Fire broke out in Butte County. It burned 150,000 acres, incinerated 19,000 buildings and took 86 lives.
Both fires have been blamed in part on equipment owned by power utility PG&E, which last week missed an interest payment on its bonds and announced the intention to reorganize itself under Chapter 11.
Bankruptcy is the natural option, says Hugh Wynne, analyst with Sector Sovereign Research — it enables the utility to continue operating, to consolidate the many claims against it, and, most importantly, to sell assets free of those claims in order to raise cash. Wynne sees this as the beginning of a years-long restructuring of the ownership and operation of the California power grid — a restructuring that will end up costing PG&E’s current ratepayers an enormous sum of money not just to cover past fire destruction, but also to harden the grid against the fires to come.
Read full story at Forbes…
first published week of: 01/21/2019