Utility News

Palm Beach Post:

Florida Power & Light officials told state regulators today that nuclear power should join solar and wind as a renewable energy source in Florida…

The definition of renewable energy in Florida statutes includes energy from ethanol, biodiesel, biomass, biogas, hydrogen fuel cells, ocean energy, hydrogen, solar, hydro, wind or geothermal. Nuclear power is not included.

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The New York Times:

Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

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CNBC:

The huge numbers of fish sucked to their death by the cooling system at the Indian Point nuclear plant prove that the system harms the Hudson River environment, a New York state official has ruled.

The finding by J. Jared Snyder, assistant commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, is a victory for plant critics who claim that up to 1.2 billion fish and eggs are killed each year as the plant continuously draws in river water for use as a coolant.

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The New York Times:

American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.

The new drilling boom uses advanced technology to release gas trapped in huge shale beds found throughout North America — gas long believed to be out of reach. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, releasing less of the emissions that cause global warming than coal or oil.

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The New York Times:

Lured by state subsidies and buoyed by high oil prices, the wind industry has arrived in force in upstate New York, promising to bring jobs, tax revenue and cutting-edge energy to the long-struggling region. But in town after town, some residents say, the companies have delivered something else: an epidemic of corruption and intimidation, as they rush to acquire enough land to make the wind farms a reality.

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The Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News:

In what it sees as a wake-up call for electric customers, the state Public Utility Commission released a study showing residential electric bills in Pennsylvania would increase an average 43 percent if rate caps came off tomorrow.

The PUC plans to run the numbers quarterly, in part to warn customers about what will happen when rate caps expire in 2010 and 2011.

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USA Today:

Five years after the worst blackout in U.S. history, the nation’s electrical system is far better equipped to prevent another big outage, but significant shortcomings remain, federal officials, grid operators and consultants agree.

Since the blackout on Aug. 14, 2003, which affected 50 million people in the Northeast, Midwest and part of Canada, federal regulators have approved standards for upkeep of the power grid. And utilities have new systems to monitor the network.

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Seeking Alpha:

A study released on 7/30/08 by Amercan Clean Skies Foundation and Navigant Consulting states that U.S. unconventional natural gas deposits are sufficient to supply 118 years of U.S. demand at 2007 levels. Newly developed fracking and horizontal drilling techniques have made it possible to recover enormous quantities of gas from tight sands, coalbed methane, and gas shale formations, reports the Oil & Gas Journal (8/4/08)…

Natural gas is finding more demand from electric utilities. It is fairly cheap and easy to create and operate a natural gas facility for generating power, not to mention the environmental advantages over coal. Considering all these factors, a new super-abundance of gas may hinder efforts to promote solar, wind, and other renewable forms of electrical generation that may need subsidies to make them competitive with gas.

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The New York Times:

When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

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AP via Forbes:

Verizon Communications Inc. and two unions representing 65,000 workers who had threatened to strike within hours agreed Sunday on a new three-year contract that provides 10.5 percent wage increases and changes in retirement benefits.

The pact, which must be ratified by union members, was hailed as a “breakthrough agreement in many ways” by Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen.

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