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ENERGY REPORTING samples include.... New Energy Trading Markets— ISOs redesign ancillary services markets. Click on Contents followed by Table of Contents then find the headline above in the upper right hand corner. A Surge in Self Made Electricity
Few Choices for Energy Self-Sufficiency
It’s Payback Time For Power Providers KeySpan to Ease Long Island Energy Pinch
North Carolina man abandons wind farm plan
Thu Jul 26, 2007 6:42PM EDT
By Jim Brumm
WILMINGTON, North Carolina (Reuters) - A North Carolina doctor's year-old effort to get the go-ahead for the state's first wind farm ended on Thursday after he failed to find the money to fund an application seeking approval for the project.
The state's legislature is poised to impose renewable energy requirements on the state's utilities. Richard Calhoun and his brother Tommy formed Northwest Wind Developers LLC and filed with the state Utilities Commission in July 2006 seeking approval to install 25 to 28 wind turbines on the family farm in the Great Smoky Mountains of northwestern North Carolina.
In that filing, Calhoun estimated the project would generate 50 megawatts of power at a total cost of $60 million to $65 million. On Thursday, the presiding commissioner dismissed the application, citing a July 18 letter from Calhoun to the commission in which he described his inability to finance the studies needed to complete his application.
The order dismissing the application said that despite a 120-day extension granted in February, "the application is incomplete."
Calhoun said the year-long effort to get the project off the ground had impressed him "with the amount of 'deep pockets' one would have to have to do all the preliminary work."
He added he was "unwilling to place my family's financial future at further risk."
Calhoun was unable to secure bank financing without the backing of the commission.
Now pending before the North Carolina House is a bill already approved by the Senate that would require the state's utilities, including subsidiaries of Duke Energy Corp and Progress Energy Inc., to provide some power they sell from energy efficiency savings or renewable sources, such as wind.
The bill calls on each utility to get 3 percent of its electricity from renewable sources or demand reductions by 2012. This increases to 10 percent in 2018 for electric co-ops and city-owned utilities, which are not regulated by the Utilities Commission. For Duke and Progress, the standard increases to 12.5 percent in 2021. Decision delayed on N. Carolina wind farm plan
Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:35 PM ET
By Jim Brumm
WILMINGTON, N.C., Feb 14 (Reuters) - Regulators have postponed a decision on North Carolina's first wind farm at least six months to allow a developer time to gather data for an application for the 50-megawatt project, the developer said on Wednesday.
Concerned about the cost of gathering data needed to support a complete application to install 25 to 28 wind turbines in the Great Smoky Mountains, Dr. Richard Calhoun had sought a ruling from the North Carolina Utilities Commission that the 300-foot (91-metre) -foot tall turbines were windmills allowed by the state's Ridge Law.
The request for additional time was granted following a hearing on Tuesday. A hearing on the project was scheduled for Aug. 8.
With the exception of windmills, the law prohibits structures over 40 feet (12 metres) tall from ridges above 3,000 feet (914 metres), where the best wind for generating electricity blows.
Calhoun said the "couple of hundred thousand dollars" needed to complete a wind study supporting the project will be "a worthwhile investment."
The application, filed by Northwest Wind Developers LLC, a limited partnership formed by Calhoun and his brother, projected a cost of $60 million to $65 million for the facility, to be built on family farmland in Ashe County, in northwestern North Carolina.
A physician, farmer and former county commissioner, Richard Calhoun has been looking at the possibility of wind development on his farm for about two years, according to Dennis Grady, the director of Appalachian State University's Energy Center, which studies wind farm issues.
Although this would be North Carolina's first wind farm, turbines with a capacity to generate some 300 megawatts of electricity have been installed in the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Tennessee, Grady said.
Encouraged by the Utilities Commission's denial of a request for a declaratory order that Northwest Wind violated the state's ridge law, Calhoun filed with regulators on Monday seeking additional time to complete the application. A surge in self-made electricity
By Jim Brumm | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
Patrick Kline usually gets four or five inquiries a week about emergency generators. By last Monday, just days after the Northeast's huge blackout, the Pompton Plains, N.J., dealer had nearly 50. Backup power has become a front-burner issue in many consumers' minds.
And sales are heating up.
Even before last week's blackout, spending on units capable of providing all home power was surging. David Pettigrove, a senior analyst at Bainbridge Inc., in San Diego, was projecting spending on residential backup generators would climb to between $200 million and $250 million nationwide in 2003 - up 15 to 20 percent from last year, when spending grew 30 percent from 2001, thanks in large part to California's blackouts and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, manufacturers are gearing up to meet even more demand.
Should you join the frenzy and get backup power for your own home? The key, dealers and industry spokesmen say, is to determine your needs and the costs involved now - certainly before the next crisis.
Once the power goes out, buyers "have a four-hour window to buy a generator before they're gone," says Honda Power Equipment spokesman Sage Marie.
One popular option is a portable backup generator. Hardware stores sell these at prices that typically start at around $400. These gasoline-powered units can generate enough electricity to keep the refrigerator going while operating a computer and microwave.
But powering your entire house during an emergency involves more planning - and some real expense.
Costs for these systems range from $2,000 for a portable unit that can be plugged into a home's wiring to $12,000 for a permanently installed power plant that will start up automatically after the wires to the house stop delivering electricity, Mr. Pettigrove notes.
At a minimum, the generator buyer has to pay an electrician another $150 to $200 to install a switch that will isolate one's home from the power company, allowing the portable generator to send electricity directly into the home's wires.
And for less than the cost of energy-efficient windows, a power plant attached to the same gas lines that go to your water heater and kitchen stove can automatically take over for the utility in less than 10 seconds.
Meanwhile, a number of homeowners have been turning to alternative energy, such as solar panels. Typically, they're doing it for environmental reasons or (in very isolated locations) to save money, rather than as backup systems.
That's because most solar-power buyers are unwilling to pay the additional 15 to 20 percent for batteries that store the energy during the day and power homes at night, says Angelo Lombarto, who heads Solar Home Solutions, a residential marketing program BP rolled out this year in California, the New York City area, New Jersey, and greater Philadelphia.
Instead, they opt for systems that shut down when local power deliveries stop, in order to avoid sending power back up the wires to where linemen are fixing the breakdown.
By the end of last year, the Solar Energy Industries Association says, about 70 megawatts of solar power were connected to the grid - the wires owned and operated by the local utility - and estimates suggest that about half of that was installed on homes, mostly in California.
Now, with its new marketing effort, BP Solar is hoping to expand the number of solar-powered homes in the Northeast. Another solar panelmaker, AstroPower, has enlisted Home Depot to market its systems.
The company is targeting "sunny, coastal areas with high-cost power and with good rebates," says Jerry Shields, a spokesman for Home Depot. Some 100 stores in California, New Jersey, Long Island, and Delaware now carry the systems.
They don't come cheap. Although BP will install solar systems generating as little as half a kilowatt (KW), enough to power five light bulbs at once, most buyers install 3- to 6-KW systems, Lombarto says.
Such a system costs about $8 per watt in New Jersey, before a state refund of $5.50 per watt, and $9 per watt in California, where the state subsidy is now $3.80 per watt.
A total of 13 states provide such subsidies, according to DSIRE, a program of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council funded by the US Department of Energy and operated by the North Carolina Solar Center.
Nevertheless, a 3-KW system in, say, Parsippany, N.J., would set a homeowner back some $7,500 - even after the state subsidy.
And, for about the same price as adding batteries to that solar system, a buyer could install a gasoline-fueled system from Kohler Power Systems or Coleman Powermate that would provide more than double the power on cloudy days as well as at night, points out George Zirnhelt, an analyst at Power System Research, a Minneapolis firm that conducts market research for for various energy- industry equipment makers.
That's why, in the wake of last week's blackouts, Kohler Power is doubling the production at its Kohler, Wis., plant through October, says Mark Repp, the company's marketing director. Reuters April 9, 2001
Few choices for energy self-sufficiency
By Jim Brumm
NEW YORK - For homeowners spooked by California's energy crisis, there are two options to ensure the lights stay on during blackouts. One will barely keep a fan running, and the other will likely rouse the ire of neighbors.
For $7,000 to $14,000, homeowners can install solar panels that generate 1 or 2 kilowatts of power, enough to power a computer, microwave and a few lights, but not enough to run the refrigerator while doing anything else at home.
The cheaper alternative, gasoline-driven generators, cost much less than the ecologically sound solar panels, though one producing 5 kilowatt of power - enough for an entire house, less air conditioning - is best installed off-site with plenty of insulation to keep a damper on the din they generate.
Despite the offer of state rebates and the threat of rolling blackouts cutting power across California this summer, few people are making a run on alternative energy sources. Even in the face of California's woes and price surges in New York City, only 34 percent of businesses and 30 percent of people surveyed by RKS Research & Consulting in September and October expressed an interest in generating their own electricity.
This level of interest was little changed from the firm's surveys taken the previous two years, RKS President David Reichman said. Only "massive" reductions in the use of electricity will help California's utilities this summer, said Phil Giudice, in charge of Mercer Management Consulting's utilities practice.
Giudice said there have to be incentives to not use electricity, describing last week's 40 percent increase for the cost of power in California as "certainly in the right order of magnitude."
SOLAR PANELS SALES QUADRUPLE TO 250 MONTH
Homeowners who decided to acquire their own power supply turned, albeit in small numbers, to the well-established technology of solar power and portable generators.
Applications for the state of California's solar rebate program more than quadrupled in the first two months of the year, reaching 200 and 250, according to Bo Harmon, a spokesman for BP Solar, a unit of BP Amoco .
Solar panels, also produced by AstroPower , which attracted investment from GPU Inc. to boost West Coast production, Evergreen Solar and Siemens' Solar Group, usually are installed to supplement electricity distributed by local utilities.
Home installations cost about $7 per watt, or $7,000 to $14,000 for the typical 1 or 2 kilowatt installation, Harmon said. But the state of California will rebate $3 per watt, cutting the total cost to $4,000 to $8,000. Similar rebates are also available in New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Harmon said BP Solar recommends a 4 to 5 kilowatt installation for the average home - enough to power everything except the air conditioner. Most people install just 1 or 2 kilowatts, he said.
Also available are the small gasoline-fueled power plants marketed for recreational use, and their larger cousins used by contractors. Producing 1 kilowatt to 10.5 kilowatts, these units are sold by Honda Motor Co. , Kohler Co., Sunbeam Corp.'s Coleman and Genrec, which is being acquired by Briggs & Stratton .
West Coast sales are up more than 30 percent this year and there is no shortage of units, according to John Lally of Honda's Power Equipment Division.
He said the smallest unit sells for $800 and a 5 kilowatt generator is priced at $1,800.
MICROTURBINES PROVIDE HEFT
For small businesses and the really well-heeled, a more recently developed source of on-site power production with plenty of punch is the microturbine, made by Capstone Turbine Corp. and Honeywell Power.
Tony Prophet, president of the Honeywell International unit, said its 75 kilowatt unit can be delivered in two to three weeks, though they can cost $50,000 to $75,000.
If more power is needed, 200 kilowatt diesel-powered generators are available from Cummins Engine Co. in 30 days or less, according to spokesman Bob Sheldon.
Another 200 kilowatt power source are fuel cells from United Technologies' International Fuel Cells.
The lead time on these units has increased to 16 weeks from 10 weeks in January, according to spokesman Peter Dalpe.
However, it is to late to get summer relief from a 1 or 2 megawatt diesel-powered generator, the most popular way to provide back up power for hospitals and small manufacturing plant.
Sheldon said Cummins can deliver in 70 to 80 days; and Caterpillar , the largest producer of these plants, declines to discuss its backlog. NJBiz Nov 4, 2002 NEWARK It’s Payback Time For Power Providers
By Jim Brumm The state’s four major utilities prepare for
price hikes next year when rate caps are lifted After four years of falling electric rates, New Jersey consumers and companies will see their rates start to climb again next year during the hottest part of the summer. The increases will be 8% or more for commercial users and at least 10% for households.
The increases will mark the end of rate caps designed to spur competition among power providers during a four-year transition to deregulation. The state launched the plan in 1999 under then-Governor Christine Todd Whitman with claims that it would drive down energy prices. But while the measure has managed to trim utility bills for a while, it has also angered everyone from customers to politicians.
In a little noticed report last August, a task force created by Governor James E. McGreevey criticized implementation of the law by the Board of Public Utilities (BPU), stating, “competition has not developed, consumers have little more choice and wholesale energy prices have risen sharply.”
When the BPU-imposed rate caps expire next August, the state’s 3.6 million electricity buyers will find themselves exposed to rising rates that will include the recovery of $1.4 billion of deferred costs that utilities could not collect while rates were controlled. The state’s four major utilities have asked the board to approve another $370 million in annual revenue to recover investments and operating cost increases since early 1997, the last time a rate increase was allowed.
The increases will put an end to four years of declining electric rates for the state’s utility customers. As a result of the BPU-ordered reductions, rates have fallen 10%-to-14% since July, 1999. The biggest cuts came from the state’s largest utility, Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) of Newark, a unit of Public Service Enterprise Group (see story on page 26). PSE&G was ordered to lower prices by an average of 13.9% for its nearly 2 million customers. The No. 2 utility, Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L), a unit of First Energy of Akron, Ohio, cut rates by 11% for its more than 1 million customers.
Also making reductions under the 1999 plan were Rockland Electric, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison of New York City, which reduced rates by 11.6%, and Conectiv, owned by Pepco Holdings of Washngton, D.C., whose cuts totaled 10.2%.
Under the currently projected rate increases, customers of all four companies will still pay less for electricity when the caps come off next August than they did in July 1999 before the first rate cuts took effect. However, rising wholesale power costs could upset those estimates.
Consumers caught a glimpse of what might happen last February when PSE&G bought contracts to supply its New Jersey customers from August 1, 2002 to July 31, 2003 for some 13.6% more than the price caps allow it to recover. As a result, PSE&G now intends to sell $250 million of bonds to finance the shortfall.
Mark Sperduto, director of corporate issues for PSE&G, says the bond issue will help to moderate the company’s rate increases. Based on expectations that the BPU will approve the debt sale, Sperduto projected power costs of 11¢ per KWh for such customers as schools, restaurants and small stores -- up from the 10.07¢ they now pay but still 5.4% below the 11.63¢ they paid in July 1999. For residential customers served by PSE&G, rates are projected to rise from today’s 10.5¢ per Kwh to 11.64¢ next August. This compares with the 12.11¢ consumers paid before the first cuts took effect in 1999.
At JCP&L, spokesperson Ron Morano says commercial customers will pay some 6% less when increases take effect next August than they paid in 1999. Morano says schools will pay about 11.32¢ per KWh compared with 11.98¢ in July 1999.
In addition, Morano says JCP&L’s requested increases would raise residential rates 7.8% next August to an average of 11.6¢ KWh. This would still be 5.2% below the 12.2¢ residential customers paid in 1999.
The big question is how far and how fast rates will rise in the next few years without ceilings to restrain them. While the utilities have not publicly disclosed their forecasts, Trenton is clearly worried. According to the report of McGreevey’s task force, “No other state in the nation has mandated inflexible rate caps for as long as four years and required ratepayers to pay back deferred balances, including interest costs. Consequently, no other state has a deferred balance debt nearly as as large as New Jersey’s.”
To ease future increases, the task force urged McGreevey to sign legislation that would empower the BPU to order utilities to collect deferred costs over 15 years instead of immediately.
At the same time, the ceilings on utility rates have stymied efforts to increase competition in New Jersey because traders buying from out-of-state suppliers have little incentive to sell to customers that pay prices that are capped below the market. Sperduto says most business customers who initially chose outside power companies returned when capped prices slipped below the market prices other suppliers charged. According to the BPU, less than 1% of New Jersey utility customers now buy electric power from suppliers other than their local utility.
Under the partial deregulation set by the 1999 law, the state’s utilities have either sold off their power plants or transferred them to affiliates outside the BPU’s control. The utilities have retained the wires that deliver electricity, which remain under the board’s regulatory authority.
Meanwhile, utility customers will soon feel the impact of a McGreevey administration tax change designed to close the state’s $5 billion budget deficit. Under a 1997 law, a special assessment that utilities collect from ratepayers was to have ended in January 2003. But with budget deficits yawning, the special assessment, which adds about 2.5% to the average commercial customer’s electric bill, will remain in place until 2007. That will be one more bump on the road to full deregulation.
KeySpan to ease Long Island energy problems
As seen on Planet Ark, August 21, 2001
NEW YORK - KeySpan Corp. believes natural gas is an answer to Long Island's 36 year search for energy and is participating in four pipeline projects which will deliver nearly one billion cubic feet of gas daily to New York City's eastern suburbs.
Completion of all four pipelines would increase KeySpan's capacity to deliver natural gas on Long Island by roughly 50 percent, filling the gas mains the utility is building at the rate of 200 miles (322 km) per year and providing fuel for 500 megawatts of new generation proposed for construction over the next few years.
Long Island's power problems were demonstrated again this month when a heat wave strained the island's resources.
"The loss of a tie line or major resource could have pushed us over the edge and into rolling blackouts," said Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) Chairman Richard Kessel last week.
Without increased suppliers and conservation, he said, "we will not make it through a similar heat wave next year."
The problems can be traced to the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944. Better known as the GI Bill, it funded education and guaranteed no-money-down mortgages which resulted in low-cost financing that converted Long Island's potato fields into housing developments.
Two decades after the buyers started moving into the homes, the search for increased energy turned to nuclear power and in 1973, the Atomic Energy Commission approved Long Island Lighting Co.'s (LILCO) plant at Shoreham.
While the nuclear plant was being built, expansion of gas systems across the country, including LILCO's, was halted by regulators afraid of a gas shortage.
Although the plant was approved by regulators, community opposition kept it from operating, leaving new homes on Long Island to be heated by oil.
Even though Shoreham never operated, its $4 billion cost was passed on to ratepayers, leading to the takeover of LILCO's electricity distribution system by LIPA, a state-owned utility, in 1998 when the rest of the company was merged with Brooklyn Union Gas to create Keyspan.
GAS MARKETING SUPERPOWER CREATED
Besides power plants, the merger added LILCO's gas distribution operations serving 400,000 customers to the 1.1 million already served by Brooklyn Union on Staten Island, in Brooklyn and in parts of Queens.
At that time, 38 percent of Long Island homes with gas available were using it for heat. In the New York City areas served by Brooklyn Union, nearly 80 percent of the homes served by gas mains were using the fuel for heat, Wally Parker, president of KeySpan Energy Delivery Group, said.
In contrast, Consolidated Edison Inc. , which delivers gas in the rest of the city, does not know how many residences its gas mains pass, spokesman Michael Clendenin said.
Of the 720,000 residential gas customers Con Edison does serve, less than 31 percent use the fuel for heating. The rest use it only for cooking and water heating.
But nearly 80 percent of the home heating market is not enough for KeySpan, Parker said.
The company's target is "nearly 90 percent" on Long Island and in New York City, he said.
In the first six months of 2001, KeySpan said last month, it converted about 200,000 homes to gas heat, adding $25 million in annual gross profit margin or more than 20 percent over the first half of 2000.
In all of 2000, KeySpan added $35 million to gross profit margin through conversions on Long Island and in New York City.
TWO HUNDRED MILES OF MAINS
Through the first half of the year, KeySpan is 8 percent ahead of its goal of adding $60 million to its gross profit margin in 2001 through gas conversions on Long Island and in the Boston area where the company acquired two utilities last fall.
The mergers made KeySpan the largest gas distribution company in the U.S. Northeast some 3.0 million customers.
To provide for future conversions, Parker said, "over 1 million feet" or 200 miles of new gas mains were installed on Long Island last year.
Noting over 65 percent of Long Island has no gas mains, he said another 15 million to 18 million feet of mains will have to be installed to bring mains within 100 feet of every residence on the Island.
To supply its new customers, KeySpan has joined with Duke Energy to propose three new pipelines expected to cost over $300 million, including Long Island's first link to the gas reserves in Canada's Maritime provinces. This link would come through the Islander East pipeline proposed in January to deliver 250 million cubic feet of gas daily under Long Island Sound starting in 2003.
KeySpan and Duke are also jointly expanding Transco's link to the Island that crosses New York Harbor from Old Bridge, N.J., to deliver gas from the Southwest and Gulf of Mexico. The expanded system will be known as the Cross Bay pipeline and be owned 37.5 percent each by Duke and Transco's parent, Williams Cos. , and 25 percent by KeySpan.
The first phase of the expansion is expected to deliver an additional 125 million cubic feet of gas a day to Long Beach Island starting in December 2002.
KeySpan also has a 20.4 percent in the Iroquois pipeline which delivers Western Canadian gas to the New York area and has proposed two links to Long Island.
Story by Jim Brumm
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