Chase Energy Canada Limited

Saskatchewan’s Premier is concerned about the country’s equalization formula, saying provinces with hydro benefit more than those without. Wall says that while provinces like Manitoba and Quebec enjoy cheap hydro power, which they can also sell, they also receive big equalization payments from Ottawa. Saskatchewan does not benefit from the equalization formula because it has resources such as oil, which the federal government sees as a source of wealth. At least some of the money generated from hydro power should be deducted from equalization payments that would free up federal money for programs such as health care.

The Bonneville Power Administration should be feeling this after going to great lengths to meet the challenges of connecting the enormous expansion of variable wind power to its electrical system and patiently holding regional discussions to resolve lingering disputes. Then came the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this month, overthrowing this work by asserting that it has the authority to nix BPA’s approach on what to do with its own system when too much generation threatens stability. The conflict arises when the variability of this large new wind fleet combines with spring runoff in the hydropower system to create more generation than can be used. In an electrical system, supply must be instantaneously balanced with demand or the results can be horrific. To maintain grid stability, BPA’s interim policy sets out a series of measures that include curtailing non-hydro generation, including wind generation as a last resort at limited times when dams in the Columbia River system must generate power rather than spill more water over the dams. Spill is limited by laws to protect fish from harm caused by high gas levels that too much spill creates. In an order that shows little regard for Northwest citizens and includes little explanation of its ruling, FERC elevated wind power above all else, claiming that BPA was unfairly treating wind generators connected to its system. In doing so, FERC ignored all other laws that require Bonneville to protect fish and wildlife, to ensure the reliability of our regional electrical system, and to provide power at low cost to communities across the region.

TransCanada Corporation announced it has agreed to purchase nine Ontario solar projects from Canadian Solar Solutions Inc., with a combined capacity of 88MW, for approximately $470 million. All nine projects have 20-year power purchase agreements with the Ontario Power Authority. Under the terms of the agreement, each of the nine solar projects will be developed and constructed by Canadian Solar Solutions Inc. utilizing their photovoltaic panels. TransCanada will purchase each project after it begins commercial operation and subject to certain milestones being met. Subject to regulatory approvals, TransCanada anticipates the projects will come into service between late 2012 and mid-2013. These projects will complement TransCanada’s existing operations in Ontario where it has become the largest independent power producer in the province.

ABB has successfully deployed its Network Manager™ Market Management System software to administer the Enhanced Day Ahead Commitment system at the Independent Electricity System Operator in Ontario, Canada. The new system, which is an extension to an earlier version of the MMS solution for market and energy management, deployed by ABB more than 10 years ago, includes multi-interval optimization, an enhanced real-time market system and a day-ahead commitment feature.

Battle River#4 went offline at 20:03 Friday and back online at 00:09 Sunday.

Crossfield Mayor Nathan Anderson said he is skeptical about the Alberta Government’s recent appointment of an independent panel of experts to review plans for two high-voltage transmission lines. The government should stick to its core mandates of education and health care, added Anderson. “They still don’t get it,” he said. “This isn’t about a panel to make a decision; it is about a process that the government has eliminated. They have broken the system and have refused to reestablish the process.”

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) is in the sixth year of an estimated $7-billion, 70-year federal cleanup of “legacy” wastes, environmental restoration and decommissioning of outdated and unused buildings. It includes three partially decommissioned prototype nuclear reactors, two former heavy water plants and widespread wastes at AECL’s Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), as well as its former Whiteshell, Man. research laboratories. Research and development on the application of nuclear energy to produce electricity began in the 1940s at Chalk River, as did plutonium production for U.S. nuclear weapons. The 37-hectare site now contains 70 per cent of all the radioactive legacy wastes ever produced by the research reactors and nuclear facilities operated by AECL and its predecessor, the National Research Council of Canada. More urgent are concerns about corroding spent uranium fuel rods stored in underground containers breached by water. In all, the cleanup and disposal will cost the industry and federal government billions of dollars and last most of this century.

Sundance#3 came back online at 10:51 yesterday and Sundance#5 came back online at 00:14 this morning.

HE17 through HE 21 saw prices well over $900 – AESO declared an emergency Alert 1 at 16:57 and emergency alert 0 at 19:25 yesterday. The Herald reports that Sundance#3 and #5 outages should be resolved before the weekend.

The Fredericton Region Solid Waste Commission has reached a 20 year deal with NB Power to sell the 2.1MWh power produced from methane gas to the utility. The commission expects to have two generators installed next year with the contract commencing in 2013.

An $850 million solar energy tower project slated for northeastern Riverside County has received federal approval for a 10-mile transmission line that would traverse public land. The Bureau of Land Management approved the transmission line, which will connect to the Western Area Power Authority, flow into the California market and enable Pacific Gas & Electric to take delivery. PG&E signed a long-term contract to buy the power generated from the plant, which will be on 1,400 acres of private land about 40 miles northwest of Blythe. The remote desert area was formerly Rice Army Air Field and Camp Rice, an abandoned training ground for Army Gen. George Patton’s infantry and artillery during World War II. About 17,500 mirrors, not solar panels, will be installed and swivel throughout the day to focus the sun’s light on a 640-foot-tall tower with a maintenance crane mounted on the top. Engineers say heat from molten salt kept in the tower’s tank will boil water for steam and make electricity.

ABB will supply hydroelectric, mechanical and automation equipment for Yukon Energy Corp.’s Mayo B hydroelectric project in Canada’s central Yukon. Progress on the project is well ahead of schedule and should be producing power before the end of this year. ABB is providing two new 5 MW Francis hydropower units installed in a new powerhouse. Both of these units are in the final stages of commissioning and are expected to be online within the next two weeks. The Mayo B hydro project involves a more than $120 million expansion of dam facilities on the Mayo River that will increase output from 5 MW to about 15 MW with an environmentally friendly solution.

The Alberta government has appointed an independent panel of four experts to review plans for the construction of two new multibillion-dollar transmission lines, between Edmonton and Calgary. The committee will review the Alberta Electric System Operator’s assessment of the electricity transmission requirements in that part of the province, the selection of High Voltage Direct Current technology and the timing of the planned north-south lines.

In St Albert, the flags are in the ground, signaling that AltaLink is getting closer to raising some power lines that are interfering with construction of a new dog park along Levasseur Road, but no firm date has been set on when that work will happen. The company is waiting for approval from the AESO for an outage in order to proceed with the work. Yes, a new dog park has been put on hold waiting for AltaLink waits for approval for two structures in the area to be replaced with three different apparatuses that “will shrink the footprint of the structures.

Capital Power has extended the Genesee#3 outage until at least January 18 2012. January prices went from a low before the announcement of $120/MWh for flat and last traded on screen at $126.

Bruce Power has decided it will no longer advance the option for a new nuclear plant in Alberta that has been under consideration by the company since 2007. When Units 1 and 2 return to service in 2012, Bruce Power, Canada’s only private nuclear power generating station, will operate the largest nuclear facility in the world, its eight units producing a quarter of Ontario’s electricity and half of the nuclear power in Ontario.

Walkerton, known for contaminated water that killed seven and sickened 2,300 people 11 years ago, is investigating whether to take all of Canada’s waste uranium fuel, forever. The town has amalgamated with two nearby townships under the name Brockton. Canada needs a permanent disposal site for the spent fuel from 40 years of nuclear power generation, which supplies about half of Ontario’s electricity. Brockton is about 40 kilometres from the Bruce nuclear site, and a three-hour drive northwest of Toronto. While the deal will be worth at least $16 billion to the “host community,” a spokesman for the group Concerned Walkerton Citizens warns against accepting the nuclear waste too quickly.

Plans are moving forward to build electricity-producing wind turbines as part of a $250 million project in three Michigan counties. Planning officials in Tuscola County’s Gilford Township on Monday voted in favor of Juno Beach, Fla.-based NextEra Energy Inc.’s plans for 63 wind turbines. It’s part of a the proposed Tuscola Bay Wind Energy Park.

Battle River#3 went offline at 20:02 Friday and came back online at 03:22 Saturday.

A report from Montreal-based CEC, tasked with overseeing environmental practices in Canada, the United States and Mexico says electricity-generating plants that run on fossil fuels in North America account for 33 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions originating on this continent, and six per cent globally. By comparison, the Canadian government estimates the country’s oilsands-mining operations account for just 0.1 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, or 6.5 per cent of Canada’s. The electricity plants at issue are run mostly on coal in Canada and the U.S., and oil and gas in Mexico.

After flourishing on waste water from the town’s sewage treatment plant for more than two years, Whitecourt’s biomass crop of willows and poplars was ripe for harvest. While trees aren’t usually on the list when farmers decide what crops they will plant, these species are being tested as both fuel and a way to naturally dispose of treated waste water and sludge. Whitecourt offered the seven-hectare site beside its treatment plant to researchers in 2006, along with an electricity hookup and an unlimited supply of waste water to irrigate the young trees with underground pipes. Whitecourt was the first test site in Canada, and there are now five locations in the province, says Richard Krygier, a researcher with Natural Resources Canada’s Canadian Wood Fibre Centre.

A wind warning was in effect for much of Nova Scotia on Thursday as a so-called weather bomb moved across the region, knocking out power to thousands. At the height of the power outages, more than 31,000 homes and businesses were without electricity. The outages stretched from Shelburne to Sydney.

A levy of about $4 per customer on hydro bills to cover the cost of conservation programs is legally justified, the Ontario Energy Board has ruled. The board has rejected a constitutional challenge to the levy, which collected $53.7 million across the province in 2009-2010. The money was to be used to fund programs like home energy audits, or helping businesses use renewable power. The Consumers Council of Canada had challenged the levy. The council argued that it was an indirect tax, because it was imposed on local hydro utilities and on the Independent Electricity System Operator, who then recovered the cost from customers.

The organization that governs the flow of high-voltage electricity throughout the Midwest is endorsing a $6.5 billion plan that would add or upgrade 3,665 miles of transmission lines through 12 states and part of Canada over the next five to seven years. The 16 projects would cost $5.2 billion, an amount that — for the first time — would be shared by ratepayers throughout the region. MISO says the lines will make low-cost energy accessible to the entire area and will make the electricity grid more reliable.

Ontario’s environmental watchdog says the province has no idea if its hydro ‘smart meters’ are having any effect on electricity conservation. The report is likely to cause controversy given the Ontario government’s plan to install the meters at every home and apartment in the province. The meters are supposed to allow utilities to charge consumers different prices for electricity at different times of day: high prices during peak times, lower prices at off-peak times. The trouble is, according to Ontario’s environmental commissioner is that there’s no evidence the smart meters are having any effect on consumption patterns. The Progressive Conservatives said that confirmed their claim that smart meters are “nothing more than tax machines” that force people to do laundry and other chores in evenings and very early mornings to get the lowest electricity prices.

A new analysis from the World Watch Institute indicated that there is a global nuclear remission caused by the rising cost of nuclear power plants as well as the safety issues associated with them.  Last year, nuclear power generation capacity attained a record high of 375.5 GW and this year generation capacity decreased to 366.5 GW. Most of the decline in installed nuclear power capacity is due to the halt of reactor construction. According MIT’s 2009 Nuclear Power Summary, the cost of nuclear electricity increased from $0.067/kWh in 2002 to $0.084/kWh in 2009.