Sheerness#1 went offline at 15:39 Friday and back online ay 18:42 Friday; Battle River#5 was on and off several times finally staying online at 05:58 Saturday; Keephills#1 online at 16:08 Saturday.
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.
Portland General Electric Inc. says state environmental regulators may be about to squander an historic opportunity to negotiate the early closure of Oregon’s only coal-fired power plant. The utility says it’s making a last-ditch effort next week, submitting a revised proposal to shut its 585MW Boardman plant in 2020. But if regulators reject it, as they did an earlier PGE proposal, the company says it intends to move forward with an existing plan to invest more than $500 million in new pollution controls at the plant and keep it running until at least 2040.
