Utility News

The Dallas Morning News:

By the end of this year, some electricity consumers in North Texas may have the option to save money by using power in the evening rather than during the day.

Thanks to a major power line upgrade that starts this week, electricity companies could charge different rates based on what time of day electricity is used. Customers who sign up for such pricing plans could get rock-bottom prices at night and on weekends, but pay a hefty premium for power during peak hours.

Consumers will be able to monitor their electricity use and charges in real time, and some will be able to connect to the Internet through power lines.

This week TXU Corp. began installing the initial 10,000 smart meters in Dallas. The new meters are a key piece of a four-year technology upgrade that will turn North Texas power lines into a communications network.

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Dallas Morning News:

Merrill Lynch & Co., the world’s third-largest securities firm, is drawing the scorn of global-warming activists for its role in financing TXU Corp.’s $10 billion plan to build 11 coal-fueled power plants in Texas.

More than a dozen demonstrators costumed as Wall Street financiers - black dress coats, white spats, top hats fashioned from cardboard - congregated outside the entrance to the company’s New York City headquarters Tuesday morning and handed leaflets to employees arriving for work. “Merrill Lynch - Banking on Climate Destruction,” the leaflets said.

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CNet News:

A Massachusetts company next month will release a combination power generator and space heater, a system that can cut down on electricity bills, according to backers–at least while the heat is running.

Climate Energy was formed in the year 2000 to bring “micro-combined heat and power,” or micro-CHP, to consumers in the U.S.

Combined heat and power systems, already available for industry and large buildings, are designed to harvest what is normally wasted heat during the process of power generation. As fuel is burned to make electricity, the resulting heat is captured and piped through a home’s existing hot-air heating system.

Climate Energy’s system is designed around a Honda internal combustion engine that burns natural gas to generate electricity. A heat exchanger feeds any captured heat to a furnace, which then distributes the hot air.

If sized right, the combined heat and power unit can heat a home during the cold months of the year and slash a home’s electricity bills, according to the company’s president and CEO, Eric Guyer.

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Dallas Morning News:

AUSTIN – Texas utility companies are poised to spend more than any other industry to lobby lawmakers this year, state records show, as the firms seek to keep permits for coal-fired power plants on track and stave off hard-nosed environmental standards and new controls on prices.

Energy companies have signed off on more than 350 lobbying contracts for 2007 and intend to spend between $10 million and $20 million protecting their interests this session, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of state lobbying reports.

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The New York Times:

The staff size at the New York State Public Service Commission declined by nearly one-third under the Pataki administration, and the reduction contributed to a failure by the agency to adequately monitor Consolidated Edison’s performance, according to a report to be released today by a State Assembly task force…

The task force found that the commission had about 800 employees in 1995, when George E. Pataki began the first of his three terms as governor, and now — partly due to deregulation — has about 550. Nearly 40 percent of the staff is 55 or older and is expected to retire within a decade.

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Yahoo! News:

A study has found that a modest reduction in electricity use during peak hours would reduce energy prices by at least $57 million to $182 million annually in the Mid-Atlantic region.

The study, prepared by The Brattle Group, examined the effects of reducing electricity use by three percent during the highest use hours for five utility areas. It notes that, “More widespread participation and deeper curtailments would result in even greater price impacts.”

The five Mid-Atlantic public utility commissions and PJM Interconnection worked together on the study. The objective was to demonstrate actual savings possible from greater use of demand response.

See the report.

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U.S. Water News:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, alluding to the drastic changes global warming could have on the state’s water supply, is proposing spending $4.5 billion to create two reservoirs and store more water in groundwater aquifers.

The items are a key aspect of the governor’s $43.3 billion bond plan, which he revealed during his state-of-the-state address. One of the proposed reservoirs would be in a valley about 60 miles north of Sacramento, while the other would be near Fresno.

The projects are supported by farmers but opposed by many Democrats and environmentalists.

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The New York Times:

There was a time not long ago when the Hudson River was little more than a convenient dump site, a river so heavily used and contaminated that a state commission once referred to it as New York’s open sewer. But Rockland County residents may soon be drinking its water.

A regional water supply company that serves Rockland County submitted a plan this month to build a desalination plant that would tap the Hudson to address Rockland’s long-term water needs. The company, United Water New York, would build the plant by 2015 and supply Rockland residents with 7.5 million gallons of drinking water a day…

United Water, which supplies water to more than two dozen municipalities across the country, estimates that construction of the desalination plant would cost nearly $80 million, which the company will pay for in part by raising rates. It would be built in the vicinity of Stony Point, just across the Hudson from the Indian Point nuclear plant, and include a complex treatment system that must remove not only toxic chemicals like PCBs, tritium and strontium 90, but also an array of dissolved solids like sodium, sulfate and magnesium.

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Wired:

The Gulf Coast is littered with the carcasses of unused oil equipment. Now those structures are being repurposed to build the first offshore wind farm in the United States…

Wind energy is the most promising carbon-free, nonnuclear alternative to fossil-fueled grid power. But regions with enough space and breeze for land-based wind farms—mostly in the Midwest—are far from coastal population centers; the cost of running transmission lines between generators and users is a major disincentive. That’s why wind-power entrepreneurs have set their sights on coastal waters. In the Atlantic, off Cape Cod, the 450-megawatt Cape Wind installation has been in the works for five years. But that project is mired in NIMBY activism and has yet to pass its initial federally mandated environmental review. (Ironically, a cabal of local property owners, including green-energy backers like US senator Edward Kennedy, are leading the fight against Cape Wind for fear it will mar the environment off Martha’s Vineyard.) Another project proposed for New York’s Long Island Sound has run into similar difficulties, and plans for wind farms off California have foundered on the expense of sinking pilings in the deeper Pacific coast waters.

Leave it to a couple of Gulf Coast good ol’ boys to take up the slack.

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Reuters has a nice primer on the recycling of wastewater into potable water. Enjoy!

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