Utility News

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The New York Times:

Senator John McCain toured a nuclear power plant in Michigan on Tuesday to highlight his support for the construction of 45 new nuclear power generators by 2030, a position that he said distinguished him from his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, portrayed his support of nuclear energy as part of an “all-of-the-above approach” to addressing the nation’s energy needs at a time of $4-a-gallon gasoline. He called it “safe, efficient, inexpensive and obviously a vital ingredient in the future of the economy of our nation and in our mission to eliminate over time our dependence on foreign oil.”

AP via Yahoo! News:

State utility regulators were officially advised Wednesday about additional filings concerning a request by South Carolina Electric and Gas Co. to begin work on the site of two proposed nuclear reactors.

SCE&G, which is owned by Scana Corp., and state-owned utility Santee Cooper want to build and operate two additional reactors, estimated to cost about $10 billion, at their V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Columbia to meet increased demand for power.

The New York Times:

Wired connections to the home — cable and telephone lines — are the major way that Americans move information. In the United States and in most of the world, a monopoly or duopoly controls the pipes that supply homes with information. These companies, primarily phone and cable companies, have a natural interest in controlling supply to maintain price levels and extract maximum profit from their investments — similar to how OPEC sets production quotas to guarantee high prices…

The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. Anyone, so long as he or she complies with a few basic rules to avoid interference, could try to build a better Wi-Fi and become a broadband billionaire. These wireless entrepreneurs could one day liberate us from wires, cables and rising prices.

The New York Times:

A no-holds-barred, all-American gold rush for natural gas is under way in this forgotten corner of the South, and De Soto Parish, with its fat check from a large energy company this month, is only the latest and largest beneficiary. The county leaders and everyone around them, for mile after mile, over to Texas and up to Arkansas, in the down-at-the-heels city of Shreveport and in its struggling neighbors, suddenly find themselves sitting on what could prove to be the largest natural gas deposit in the continental United States.

Already, several dozen people who own parcels of land over the field are becoming instant millionaires as energy companies pay big money for the mineral rights to the gas, which like other energy sources is worth far more than it was last year. Jalopies are being traded in for Cadillacs, plans for swimming pools are being hatched in rusty trailers, and the old courthouse here is packed to the rafters day after day with oil company “landmen” (and women), whose job it is to frantically search the record books for the owners of the mineral rights to land that has become like gold.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday approved the rate of return requested by Allegheny Energy Inc. on its proposed Trans-Allegheny Interstate power line.

As approved by the commission, the Greensburg-based energy company will be allowed a 12.7 percent profit on its investment.