30. April 2008 by admin.

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TORONTO, April 30 /CNW/ - Hydro One’s plan to build a new $640 million transmission line from the Bruce nuclear station to serve the GTA doesn’t seem to make financial sense and the line probably shouldn’t be built, says Ontario public interest environmental group Pollution Probe. A three-week hearing into the application to build the line begins before the Ontario Energy Board tomorrow in Orangeville.

Murray Klippenstein, lawyer for Pollution Probe, said, “Sometimes the engineer’s desire to build things needs to be restrained by the bean counter’s question of whether it really makes dollar sense. This transmission line will take $640 million out of customers’ pockets, but it looks like wise energy use principles and customers’ financial interest both line up to say this project
shouldn’t happen.”

Pollution Probe’s electrical transmission line experts have filed a report with the Ontario Energy Board concluding that “the proposed new line is not necessary to deliver the energy and capacity of the existing and planned resources in the Bruce area” and that “contrary to (Hydro One’s) claims, it does not appear that the proposed project benefits likely outweigh its cost.”

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29. April 2008 by admin.

Power returned slowly to Venezuela Tuesday night, a few hours after widespread outages blacked out nearly half the country, trapping people in elevators, stalling subways, filling streets with pedestrians and forcing hospitals to switch to emergency generators.

“We understand that at 1600 hours — that is to say at 4 p.m. (4:30 p.m. ET) — there was a blackout on a national level that was produced by an explosion, which is being investigated,” in the Guri hydroelectric power station, said Juan Barreto, mayor of Caracas.

“That produced a blackout in 16 states of the country, particularly those of the central north coastal area.”

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29. April 2008 by admin.

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Bruce Power LP shut the 750-megawatt Unit 5 at the Bruce A nuclear power station in Ontario on April 28 to allow workers to repair control room computer equipment, the company said in a release.

The company expects the unit to return in a few days.

The 6,261 MW Bruce station is located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron north of Kincardine, about 155 miles (250 km) northwest of Toronto. There are four 750 MW Units 1-4 at the A station (which entered service in 1977-1979) and three 822 MW Units 5-7 and one 795 MW Unit 8 at the B station (1984-1987).

All of the other units were available for service.

Electricity traders noted the company will likely shut Unit 3 in early May for about a month for planned maintenance.

Unit 3 last shut from April 25-May 16, 2007. It is on a 12-month maintenance cycle.

Before the company replaces the steam generators on Units 3 and 4, it will continue to shut the units for maintenance more often than the Bruce B units (about every 12 months for Bruce A versus about 30 months for Bruce B) but for shorter outages (1 month for Bruce A versus 2 months for Bruce B).

The company plans to replace the steam generators in Unit 3 and 4 by 2013, after restarting Unit 2 in late 2009 and Unit 1 in early 2010. The cost to return Units 1 and 2 is estimated at C$3.1 to C$3.4 billion.

Ontario Hydro, the former province-owned power company, shut Units 1 and 2 in 1997 and 1995, respectively, because they needed extensive upgrades.

The company expects to increase the output of Unit 8 to about 822 MW by modifying the fuel-loading system by 2009.

One MW powers about 1,000 homes in Ontario.

Bruce Power LP, of Tiverton, Ontario, operates the entire Bruce complex and leases the Bruce B station from Ontario Power Generation, the province-owned generating company.

Bruce Power A LP, which leases the Bruce A station from OPG, was set up when Bruce Power and the government agreed to restore the A station to full service. It is a partnership among TransCanada (47.4 percent), BPC (47.4 percent), the Power Workers’ Union (4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (1.2 percent).

BRUCE A RESTART

The return of Units 1 and 2 would replace more than 20 percent of the province’s 6,400 MW of coal-fired generation, which the government wants to shut for health and environmental reasons by 2014.

Bruce is also considering refurbishing the four Bruce B reactors and/or building new reactors at the station.

In January 2007, Bruce launched an environmental assessment of the possible new build project that will take about three years to complete. The project would add 4,000 MW of electricity to the grid by about 2016.

Bruce said it would need to refurbish all four Bruce B units between 2015 and 2020. The company said it would decide in the future whether it makes economic sense to refurbish the existing units, replace them with new reactors or do both. (Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by John Picinich)

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29. April 2008 by admin.

Power plant additions have failed to keep up with electricity demand, Cal-ISO says.

The risk of electricity blackouts in Southern California during the hottest days this summer is more than triple that of previous years because power plant additions have failed to keep up with demand, the state’s grid manager said.

The likelihood of a Stage 3 emergency, when reserves dip below 3% and power is cut to some customers to prevent a system collapse, rose to 10% for Southern California from 3% in last year’s forecast, the California Independent System Operator said in a report Monday.

The state will have 489 megawatts of new generation in time for peak demand in July or August, some of that replacing a 122-megawatt plant that’s being retired. Southern California will need to rely on imports from Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, as well as conservation, to avoid blackouts.

Demand probably will increase by 1,000 megawatts this year over last year, Cal-ISO Chief Executive Yakout Mansour said during a conference call. Power demand peaked at 48,615 megawatts in 2007.

“Conditions will be more difficult” in Southern California, Cal-ISO said in its 2008 Summer Assessment. “Voluntary conservation and on-call interruptible loads could be needed more frequently than normal.”

Northern California should escape shortages, Cal-ISO said.

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28. April 2008 by admin.

LINDSAY, Ont. - More than 12,000 Hydro One customers are without electricity Monday in parts of central and southern Ontario.

Most outages are in the City of Kawartha Lakes and Brock and Georgina townships including Fenelon Falls, Lindsay and Kirkfield. Hydro One says the outage began just before 7 a.m. after a utility pole caught fire and power should be fully restored by about 10:30 a.m.

Repair crews are also working to restore power to about 1,000 customers south of Barrie and west to the Collingwood area.

Another 1,700 customers are also without power in the Simcoe region.

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28. April 2008 by admin.

The power grid has endured three decades of abuse. It took the biggest blackout in U.S. history, one that caused 50 million people to lose power on August 14, 2003, to mobilize the government and electrical utilities to begin dealing with the problem. Since then, Congress has passed legislation that provides incentives for utilities to invest more in power distribution and transmission.

It will take years and vast sums of money to renovate the grid. Nearly half of the system’s 2.2 million miles was built between 1948 and 1970. That equipment has a half life of roughly 40 years. That means that much of the system has already begun to degrade.

And it means big bucks for the companies that will help repair the grid.

North American utilities spent about $9 billion in 2007 to upgrade the aging electric grid, says Sterne Agee analyst Michael Coleman. That represents a 20% increase from 2006 and is twice the level of spending in 2003. Coleman expects grid investment to grow to $10 billion by 2010.

U.S. laws passed in 2005 and 2007 are crucial to businesses that supply the equipment and know-how to build and maintain the power grid. The laws allowed more private capital to invest in power infrastructure, mandated new standards of reliability that force utilities to upgrade, and made it easier for state and local governments to acquire land for creating new electrical-transmission routes.

Moreover, power companies have the wherewithal to finance grid improvements. “Utilities right now have the lowest debt-to-capital ratio they have had in the past 30 years,” says Russell Croft, co-manager of the Croft Value fund. “They are undercapitalized and can take on debt for new projects.”

Croft has identified three stocks of companies that should benefit the most from upgraded spending on the power grid. They are General Cable, ABB and Quanta Services.

General Cable will supply many of the power lines. The Highland Heights, Ky., company makes aluminum, copper and fiber-optic wire and cable.

Sales to utilities represented one-third of the company’s 2007 revenue of $4.6 billion. “As the North American market leader, General Cable is extremely well-positioned to grow volumes and achieve price increases in excess of cost in this market,” Coleman says.

He says the company will be able to boost prices enough to offset the increasing cost of materials from rising metal prices. Roughly half of General Cable’s sales come from contracts that contain provisions to raise prices as material costs rise.

The U.S. grid build-out is only one facet of General Cable’s growth prospects, Coleman says. He expects demand from emerging markets, which are rapidly expanding their power grids and increasing exploration for oil and gas worldwide to fuel sales growth.

For example, General Cable recently received a $30 million award for its first offshore wind-farm project. Its products also are used in the construction of nuclear power plants, hydroelectric power generation and exploration for oil in the tar sands of Albert, Canada.

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26. April 2008 by admin.

Find Backup Generators in Florida

Targeting areas around many Broward and Miami-Dade hospitals, Florida Power & Light is continuing to toughen its system to make it withstand hurricanes. But it’s not clear how much the utility has done.

The Store Secure program is now in its third year. The utility reports hardening 14 miles in 2006 and 145 miles in 2007. It says it plans to strengthen lines in 270 miles this year. That adds up to 429 miles — or about 1 percent of the 41,000 miles of above-ground miles in FPL’s system.

Eugenio Santiago, a Key Biscayne structural engineer who has studied FPL’s maintenance system, wonders about the speed of the work. “It appears the pace they’re following is not really productive. This could be decades.”

FPL spokesman Mayco Villafaña said it’s not fair to compare the work being done with the entire 41,000 mile system. “It leaves in the mind of the reader that little is being done. That’s not true. The fact of the case is that we are covering most of the major hospitals, grocery stores, gas stations.”

By concentrating on critical infrastructure, the community will be able to bounce back much faster after a storm, Villafaña said. Some parts of the 41,000-mile system are already structurally tough and others are of lesser importance. “You do not need to do all of the system immediately.”

He said it would take 10 years or more to harden the entire FPL system to meet extreme wind standards, which require the electric grid in some areas to withstand winds of up to 150 mph.

SITE VISIT

On Thursday, the utility invited journalists to visit a work site on Flamingo Road where line specialists were working on transferring lines from thin wooden poles to thick, tall concrete poles along a two-mile stretch between a substation and Memorial Hospital West in Pembroke Pines.

While work is not being done in residential areas, Villafaña said that with a main distribution line strengthened, ”it means we can come up real quickly after a storm.” Repair crews won’t have to bother with main lines and will be able to move faster into residential neighborhoods than they have in the past.

FPL announced its Storm Secure program in January 2006, after seven hurricanes had blasted its operating area in 15 months.

It volunteered to harden its system to meet extreme wind standards.

At the time, many Florida legislators were complaining vehemently about the company and talking about passing bills that would force utilities to strengthen their systems.

After the program was announced, the political complaints disappeared.

The first year’s efforts focused on strengthening the system at the ports in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, plus Jackson Memorial and Mount Sinai hospitals. In many cases, concrete replaced wood and the bases of the poles were buried deeper in the ground.

Last year, which officials said was the first time FPL was ”implementing this program full blast,” FPL reported it spent $47 million on the program, according to regulatory filings, strengthening power lines around 28 hospitals, 43 highway crossings and feeder lines serving the Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear generators.

2008 REPORT

For 2008, FPL reports it’s spending $77 million to strengthen the lines around 49 hospitals, 32 highway crossings and other critical areas, particularly around supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies.

In Broward, the utility is focusing on the areas around Memorial Pembroke, Memorial West, Holy Cross, Northwest Medical Center, Plantation General, North Broward Medical Center, Coral Springs Medical Center and Florida Medical Center.

In Miami-Dade, FPL workers are strengthening the system around six hospitals: Hialeah, Kendall Regional, Mercy, Miami Children’s, Palm Springs General and Metropolitan, the new name for the historic Pan American Hospital.

POLE INSPECTION

The utility also continues its pole program in which more than one million poles will get inspected at least once during an eight-year cycle.

This year, the utility said it plans to inspect 143,000 poles, 18,810 in Miami-Dade and 11,610 in Broward.

To keep trees from crashing into lines, FPL said it plans to trim trees and clear vegetation along 11,000 miles of line throughout the state, including 1,100 miles in Broward and 1,850 miles in Miami-Dade.

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24. April 2008 by admin.

Take $100.00 off the regular price of a diesel generator when you mention this news story.

Customers in western Queens can expect to receive about $100 each from Consolidated Edison as compensation for having to sweat through nine days without power in July 2006, according to officials who have been briefed on the settlement.

The approval of the settlement, which the utility proposed several weeks ago and which will total $17 million, was to be announced at a news conference on Thursday.

Customers will receive a credit on their monthly bill, which will also include a brief apology from the company.

Additionally, Con Edison will not be allowed to charge customers to recoup $40 million in repair costs from the blackout, according to the officials briefed on the matter.

The recompense and the ruling on repair costs follow an investigation by the state’s Public Service Commission into the failure of the electrical network in Long Island City during a period in July 2006, which affected an estimated 174,000 customers.

The terms of the proposed settlement were reported in The Daily News this month.

Officials with Con Ed and the Public Service Commission declined to comment on Wednesday.

The results of the investigation were to be announced at a news conference that will include representatives of Western Queens Power for the People Campaign, a group of residents that formed during the blackout.

Memories of the power failure are still raw in Queens, where residents were forced to abandon their homes and businesses and ferry medicine and food to friends and relatives who were unable to navigate the stairs in their apartment buildings.

The damages and the apology will only partly satisfy the lawmakers and community groups that have been fighting with Con Ed, and its chief executive, Kevin Burke, over their handling of the crisis.

“Kevin Burke makes $100 for every two minutes he works,” said State Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, who represents Astoria, Queens, but was not privy to the terms of the settlement. “For Con Ed to provide a mere $100 for the millions of dollars in damages to this community is a slap in the face.”

According to a filing to securities regulators made by Con Ed on Friday, Mr. Burke received $5.52 million in compensation last year, nearly $800,000 more than in 2006.

In May, Mr. Gianaris proposed in a bill that the Public Service Law be changed to make it easier for customers to recoup damages from gas and electric companies.

News of Mr. Burke’s pay package and the ratepayer compensation settlement come just a month after Con Ed won the biggest one-time increase in its bills for electric service.

Despite criticism from lawmakers and residents over repeated failures at Con Ed, state regulators approved a $425 million increase in rates.

That means a typical household in New York City will pay about $4.25 more this month.

In Westchester County, typical residential customers will pay an additional $5.60 a month.

The rate increase is far less than the $1.2 billion increase that Con Ed initially sought.

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23. April 2008 by admin.

As the Minneapolis police officer assigned to problem properties, Rich Jackson has watched the particular problem of copper theft grow.

From a bust last month, where police found 6,000 pounds of stolen copper, to a house explosion a couple of weeks later, when would-be thieves cut through a gas line, the problem has spread.

And now, thieves are stealing copper from utility poles.

“Now, apparently, people are stealing the copper straight from the poles,” Jackson said. “It’s a new source of revenue for people who do this type of work.”

The city says Xcel Energy has noticed copper ground wire disappearing from poles in alleys and along some streets.

These wires don’t actually carry the electricity you use. Their purpose is to handle electricity that’s unexpected. When lightning strikes power poles, that copper ground wire carries the surge into the earth. If the wire’s not there, the pole absorbs the lighting strike.

“All of that power has to go someplace,” Jackson said.

Without ground wire, the pole could collapse and cause a power outage in whatever building is connected to it.

One piece of copper wire alone isn’t worth all that much, but lots of copper adds up. One pound of the in-demand metal now fetches as much as four dollars at a scrap yard.

“They can come here, cut a line, turn it in, maybe get 20 or 30 bucks,” Jackson said. “Well that’s a hit of meth, a hit of crack, couple of bags of marijuana.”

And in tough economic times, thieves are looking for easy money.

Xcel Energy said it is replacing the ground wires as it discovers poles that are missing the wires.
And instead of replacing them with something that immediately would be stolen again, Xcel is now using copper-clad wires, which the company says have “little to no value” one the open market.

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23. April 2008 by admin.

Johannesburg - A woman was found dead on Wednesday morning from carbon monoxide poisoning, due to the generator she was using after power was cut in the Kempton Park area.

Netcare 911 paramedics received a call at about 07:30 on Wednesday morning after the woman’s colleague went to her house to find out why she wasn’t at work.

“She phoned her from outside the house and heard the phone ringing,” said Netcare 911 spokesperson, Mark Stokoe.

Paramedics broke into the house and found the woman dead in the main bedroom.

The generator is thought to have malfunctioned, killing the woman and critically injuring her son, who was found in the bathroom.

Stokoe said it was not certain how long the generator had been running, as electricity had been off since 14:00 on Tuesday when a substation in the area caught fire.

“Paramedics say the carbon monoxide was at an unbearable level in the house,” said Stokoe.

Several family pets were found dead in the house.

Ekurhuleni municipality spokesperson Zweli Dlamini told News24 that technicians were working hard to restore power after the substation caught fire on Tuesday,.

“A transformer blew up,” said Dlamini, adding a full investigation was underway.

He said power had been restored to about 75% of the area by Wednesday morning. Areas that are likely to be without power for five days are the Kempton Park CBD, Kempton Park Extensions 1, 2 and 4, Estherpark Extension 9, Allen Grove, Rhodesfield and Spartan Manor.

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