After a bumper year for precipitation in the Pacific Northwest, BC Hydro stations around British Columbia are sitting idle while independent power producers run flat out. There’s so much water available for hydroelectric power that a Washington-Oregon utility, which runs full-time to protect salmon and trout, is paying other utilities to take electricity off its hands. That means bargain-priced import electricity is available to BC Hydro from the Bonneville Power Authority, but it’s a bittersweet opportunity. It’s difficult for BC Hydro to tap into the cheap power because of contractual obligations to purchase power from about 75 independent power producers (IPPs). Hydro is forced to buy from IPP operators, including big industrial ones such as Rio Tinto Alcan and Teck Resources, even as its own generation stations wait on standby. For example, at Peace Canyon generating station downstream of W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River, the primary source of hydroelectricity for all of B.C., the turbines are sitting idle for the first time in a decade. Prices paid to IPPs vary by season, from an average winter high of $100 to a springtime low of about $60. By contrast, the Bonneville price in recent weeks has averaged less than $20 US. The water is pouring in just as warmer spring temperatures push down electricity demand. Data this week from the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows Oregon with 172 per cent of its long-term average precipitation supply, and B.C. with 131 per cent.

Nova Scotia Power officials have announced a new milestone in the construction of a CAN$208 million biomass cogeneration plant. A steam turbine and generator used to produce electricity has arrived at the facility and NSP is confident it will generate about 60 MW a year via burned biomass. The combined weight of the turbine and generator came in at 260 tonnes and was delivered on a special rail car that came from San Diego.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government is taking steps to get rural communities to reduce their electricity bills. Areas in the province that get electricity from diesel generators will soon receive free energy efficient products, including energy efficient light bulbs and low-flow shower heads. In all, there are 42 communities that have diesel generators.

Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) is experimenting with solar windows, and if the pilot works out, they plan to scale to 2MW. Two windows on the skyscraper’s 56th floor were replaced with solar windows developed by Pythagoras Solar last year. Each generates 120 watts of electricity – about the same as a typical solar cell on a roof. The technology simply sandwiches a solar cell between two panes of glass, and a reflective prism directs sunlight onto the solar cell while also letting daylight through. Energy harnessed by the transparent solar windows reduces heat gain, and therefore cooling costs as well as generating electricity. Another really interesting solar window technology being developed by New Energy Technologies and National Renewable Energy Lab can produce solar energy in both natural and artificial light. It can power indoor lights, appliances, and even the rotor blades on a small helicopter.

Nova Scotia Power today applied to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board for approval of a Rate Stabilization Plan requesting rate increases of 3% per year for the next two years.

The provincial opposition is up in arms over a new report that finds that Nova Scotians pay even more for their electricity than people in the Yukon do—and more than all the other Canadian provinces. The data from the National Energy Board, dated April 16, found that Nova Scotians pay more than 12.6 cents per kilowatt hour, “but for the most part all provinces west of Nova Scotia have rates in the range of six to 10 cents per kilowatt hour,” according to the Chronicle-Herald. One consumer advocate wants to see the government strip Nova Scotia Power of its 9.2 percent guaranteed rate of return. Meanwhile, the premier says the cost is high because previous governments made no effort to invest in infrastructure for renewable energy, and now the high price of coal and the cost of switching to renewable sources is crunching us.

The union representing 870 scientists, engineers and technologists at SNC Lavalin Group Inc’s nuclear reactor division has voted 94 percent in favor of a strike mandate, the latest challenge for the hard-hit Canadian construction and engineering company. SNC, which acquired Candu Energy from the Canadian government last year for C$15 million plus royalties, is currently caught up in allegations of bribery and improper payments that are now being investigated by police. The Society of Professional Engineers and Associates said on Friday that it can call a strike after giving 72 hours notice and could be in position to walk off the job as soon as May 7 – they have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2010.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has completed Phase 2 of a Pre-Project Design Review of Candu Energy Inc.’s Enhanced CANDU 6^® reactor. The CNSC has concluded that there are no fundamental barriers to licensing the EC6 design in Canada. The objective of a Pre-Project Design Review is to verify, at a high level, the acceptability of a nuclear power plant design with respect to Canadian regulatory requirements and expectations. In Phase 2, the focus was on identifying any potential fundamental barriers to licensing the EC6 design in Canada…Northland Power Inc. and Aecon Group Inc. said Miwel Construction Ltd., Aecon’s wholly-owned subsidiary, has been awarded a contract to construct six 10MW solar photovoltaic generation projects in Ontario. Each of the six projects will be constructed on about 85 acres of land, and will consist of over 40,000 PV solar modules mounted on fixed structural supports. The projects will sell the electricity under Ontario’s renewable energy Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program and will use Ontario-made equipment and local Ontario labor.

The Canadian electricity market is being held back by a dearth of political co-operation and a lack of integration between provincial markets, which is preventing efficiency in generation and supply, as well as slowing the development of low-carbon electricity, finds a recent study by the University of Montreal. Under Canada’s constitution, the development of natural resources, including electricity, falls under the responsibility of each province. Electricity in Canadian markets can be divided into the hydroelectric provinces – Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec – and the other six provinces that have a more mixed-fuel base. The provinces retain control over the electricity market, except in Alberta and Ontario, where the markets have been deregulated. Under the current market structure, hydro provinces sell their electricity at regulated prices within their domestic market and then sell the excess to external markets, typically through south-directed interconnectors to markets in the United States (New York, Midwest, PJM markets). With no market-priced competition in these domestic markets, it has caused widely differing pricing across the country and less energy efficiency by consumers.

Pulp Company Mercer International has filed a $250 million claim against Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement claiming it is being placed at a competitive disadvantage by BC Hydro. Mercer, who owns the Celgar pulp mill at Castlegar, claims that as a result of intervention by Hydro, it is not able to reap the same benefits for producing green energy as its competitors in the B.C. pulp sector. What makes Celgar different from other mills, however, is that it operates in an area of the province where FortisBC is the initial provider of energy to the mill, rather than BC Hydro. Celgar and Fortis signed a contract in 2008 under which Celgar would buy power from Fortis at a so-called “heritage rate,” which is based on the cost to produce electricity from older and less expensive hydroelectric facilities. Celgar was then free to sell all its green energy at a higher rate to Hydro. Hydro had that contract blocked forcing Celgar to use its green energy internally in the mill before it could sell any at the higher rate.