A new North Caroline tax credit is generating renewed interest in an old technology that addresses one of the most common forms of energy loss: waste heat. The state tax credit, barely a month old, covers up to 35 percent of the cost of technology that captures and recycles heat that escapes up the smokestack from energy-intensive industrial processes at phosphate plants, manufacturing facilities and factories. North Carolina is the third state to offer an incentive for cogeneration technology, or combined heat and power. The state is offering a $10,500 version of the incentive for residential applications – the only such incentive in the country – even though commercial technologies are not yet widely available for private home use. N.C. State University estimates that it could save $5 million a year with the technology added to a planned 11-megawatt power plant on its main campus. The plant, to be powered by natural gas and oil, will cost $38 million. The purpose of the incentive is to encourage other industries to try it. To promote the technology, the N.C. Solar Center, N.C. Sustainable Energy Association and N.C. Manufacturers and Chemical Industry Council will include a session on the technology and new tax credit during an energy conference in November.

Keephills#1 went offline at 18:14 yesterday.

The Market Surveillance Administrator, Alberta’s electricity market watchdog, has levied a $655,000 penalty against a NorthPoint Energy – a Saskatchewan trading company, the largest fine laid by the MSA since deregulation a decade ago. The hefty charge was the sum of 332 fines against NorthPoint Energy, the trading arm of Saskatchewan Crown utility SaskPower, for breaking a rule around scheduling power sales across provincial boundaries. It comes 11 years after the administrator investigated similar rule bending between the now defunct and notorious Enron Corp. and PowerEx, the trading arm of B.C. Power. No electricity price spikes resulted from the 300-odd trades that happened between 2008 and 2009, or harm happened to the integrated power system – NorthPoint paid the fine immediately and instituted a number of changes as a result of the investigation. NothPoint  misinterpreted the rule, rather than intentionally set about trying to undermine the system for financial gain. (Calgary Herald)

The Columbia Basin Trust intends to complete its mandate to develop hydroelectric facilities with a $900-million expansion of generating capacity on the Waneta Dam south of Trail, BC. The expansion involves building an additional 335-megawatt generating station on the Waneta Dam on the Pend d’Oreille River, just south of Trail. It is expected to take a little more than four years to build, would provide employment for 400 construction workers and inject some $200 million in direct wages into the region. The Waneta expansion is one of three potential hydroelectric developments, along with facilities at the Arrow Lakes and Brilliant dams, that the Columbia Basin Trust was endowed with when the provincial government created the trust in 1994 as a vehicle to mitigate damage caused in the region by damming of the Columbia River system in the early 1960s. Now Columbia Power and the Columbia Basin Trust have reached an agreement in principle with Fortis to jointly develop and share ownership of the project, with Fortis retaining 51 per cent of its equity and the trust taking the balance. The Waneta expansion’s power-sale agreement has to be approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission. Under the Waneta agreement, Fortis would buy an average of 234 megawatts worth of the project’s power generation.

Progress Energy Florida estimates its Crystal River nuclear power plant will be back on line by the end of September now that the utility company is working to replace a cracked section of the facility’s containment wall…A bomb and gun attack on a hydroelectric power station in Russia’s Kabardino-Balkaria region has killed two guards and injured two others. Supplies to the electricity grid were not affected – the flow of water from the dam had been stopped to prevent any flooding downriver.