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Time: Visitors entering a code-locked central control room at Green Mountain Power (GMP)’s Colchester, Vt., headquarters instinctively lower their voices, whispering in deference to operators relaying orders from behind semicircular clusters of screens. It’s an intimidating space; one side of the black-walled room is taken up by a display showing a sprawling, yellow-lit maze of […]
IEEFA
S&P Global Market Intelligence ($): In its largest renewable energy shopping spree ever, PacifiCorp has shortlisted nearly 4,000 MW of new wind, solar and battery storage resources across its multistate service territory in the western United States to come online by the end of 2024. The utility subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy is […]
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S&P Global Market Intelligence ($): Several current and former policymakers expressed skepticism that hydrogen and renewable natural gas are mature enough to play a major role in their states’ transition from natural gas. “I know that there’s a lot of talk about fuels of the future like RNG and hydrogen,” former New York State Public […]
Press Release, Suzanne Mattei and Tom Sanzillo
Commission’s 21-year-old pipeline policy puts contracts ahead of utility customers
December 17, 2020 (IEEFA) — The federal agency responsible for approving interstate gas pipeline projects is basing its decisions on contracts rather than on today’s consumer energy needs or the public interest, according to a report released today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. The report—FERC’s Failure to Analyze Energy Market Forces—details […]
Press Release, Karl Cates and Seth Feaster
Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center (VCHEC), one of the newest in U.S., risks closure due to market forces
December 16, 2020 (IEEFA)—Retiring the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center (VCHEC) will bring unnecessarily abrupt economic hardship to Wise County if state and local officials do not begin to plan now for a transition, concludes a report published today by the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis. The 8-year-old coal-fired power plant, owned by […]
Dennis Wamsted
Plan shows economics, not politics, driving the shift from coal to renewables
Idaho Power’s latest revision of its 2019 integrated resource plan (IRP) charts the utility’s direction through 2040 but is likely to have the greatest impact in neighboring Wyoming in the next year or two. The IRP has Idaho Power being coal-free by 2030 and carbon neutral by 2045. This has major implications for Wyoming because […]
IEEFA
KIFI/KIDK: PacifiCorp, the parent company of Rocky Mountain Power, has issued what it calls the largest request for proposals for renewable energy projects in company history. The company is looking for competitive resources to connect to its 10-state transmission system. According to its Integrated Resource Plan, the company plans to add 1,823 megawatts of new […]
IEEFA
Times-News: A massive wind farm, Idaho’s largest, could break ground in the Magic Valley in 2022. The final size and cost for the Lava Ridge Wind Project isn’t yet known, but the wind farm could be up to 1,000 megawatts with a price tag in the $1 billion range. At 1,000 MW and with hundreds […]
Dennis Wamsted and Karl Cates
Charging customers $7,000 apiece for a long-shot industry experiment
In making a pitch for a multi-billion-dollar ratepayer-funded bailout of the state’s coal industry, Wyoming legislators are avoiding the hard truth of market realities all around them and asking rank-and-file electric customers to foot the bill. Legislation now being considered by the Wyoming legislature (House Bill No. HBO200) would direct the state’s utility commission to […]
Dennis Wamsted
Forward-looking template is one that lagging utilities like Duke Energy and Southern Company can follow
PacifiCorp’s announcement last week that it will build thousands of megawatts of new wind, solar and battery storage capacity in its transition away from coal will reshape electricity markets across the West over the next 10 years. Its impact will be felt nationally, too, perhaps nowhere as much as in the Southeast. The reason behind […]
IEEFA U.S.: FERC gives blank check approval to pipeline builders, while investors and consumers pick up costs
Commission’s 21-year-old pipeline policy puts contracts ahead of utility customersDecember 17, 2020 (IEEFA) — The federal agency responsible for approving interstate gas pipeline projects is basing its decisions on contracts rather than on today’s consumer energy needs or the public interest, according to a report released today by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. The report—FERC’s Failure to Analyze Energy Market Forces—details […]