West Fraser Orders 13MW Biomass; Mercer Claim to NAFTA for Celgar
Pratt & Whitney Power Systems has been awarded a contract to deliver a 13 MW biomass heat recovery power plant for West Fraser Timber Company in British Columbia. The state-of-the-art power plant will provide clean, carbon-neutral power to the company’s Chetwynd Forest Industries plant utilizing two Turboden 65 HRS Organic Rankine Cycle turbogenerators. The installation of the ORC unit at West Fraser’s Chetwynd facility is a part of efforts to improve operational efficiency. West Fraser was selected by BC Hydro under the BC Hydro Bioenergy Phase II Call for Power program for two of their sites totaling 180 GWh/year from wood biomass. Through this program, BC Hydro awarded 20-year electricity purchase agreements to West Fraser. Organic Rankine Cycle technology utilizes heat from several sources including biomass, geothermal, concentrated solar power, and by recovering heat from industrial processes, engines and gas turbines. The technology is unique in that it uses an organic fluid instead of steam to drive a turbo-generator, which can range in nominal output from about 1 to 10 MW and up for a single ORC module.
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.
Read MoreOntario Power Rates Increase Tomorrow
Ontario residents will start paying more for electricity starting Tuesday. The Ontario Energy Board, which reviews the rates twice a year, said prices are changing as coal-fired generation declines and is replaced with natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy. But critics say the governing Liberals’ expensive foray into wind and solar power is the main culprit behind higher hydro rates. Ontario pays up to 80.2 cents a kilowatt hour for small rooftop solar power and 13.5 cents per kWh for wind power. Ontario Power Generation, the government-owned utility, is paid 5.6 cents a kWh for nuclear power and between two cents and 3.5 cents per kWh for power from its hydro-electric facilities. Residential consumers pay between 6.2 cents and 10.8 cents a kWh. Consumers who are still paying for Ontario’s last nuclear build will see prices go up again when the government moves ahead with its $26-billion plan to refurbish its aging nuclear fleet. A new study out of Canada’s Fraser Institute shows the big price tag that can accompany a little renewable energy. Contracts for over 140 TW/h of electricity from renewable energy sources had been agreed to under the Ontario program, at a total cost of $28.4 billion (nominal dollars)—implying a weighted average electricity price of 20.31 ¢/kW-h. If the same amount of electricity had been contracted for at a rate of 7.3 ¢/kW-h (the average competitive residential rate as of December (2010), the price tag for the 140 TW-hs of electricity would have been approximately $10.2 billion. This implies that Ontario energy users could be burdened with an extra cost of at least $18 billion over the next 20 years. We estimate that residential electricity customers alone will be faced with an average annual increase in their electricity bill of $285 million (nominal dollars). Results from a Statistics Canada Input-Output (I/O) Model simulation indicate that a drop in discretionary personal spending of that magnitude could lead to a loss of close to 41,000 full time equivalent jobs across the country over a 20-year period.
Read MoreCape Breton Paper Mill Partners with NS Power; Manitoba $30M Renewable Fund
Battle River#4 went offline at 02:23 Sunday and came back online at 04:41 this morning. SaskPower Imports to Alberta are restricted to 80MW today.
The Vancouver-based company planning to buy the idle NewPage Port Hawkesbury paper mill in Cape Breton has reached a tentative energy agreement with the province’s electric utility company, a key step in its bid to get the mill operating again. The tentative 7 year power supply arrangement requires privately owned Nova Scotia Power Inc. to provide the mill with hourly projections of electricity rates a week in advance. The mill operators will then draft a production plan based on those predicted costs. The tentative deal would create a partnership between Nova Scotia Power and NewPage Port Hawkesbury. If the deal is approved, the utility will hold both preferred and common shares in NewPage Port Hawkesbury.
The Manitoba government is establishing a $30-million fund to help local businesses in the renewable energy field remain competitive. The fund will help companies that build equipment for hydro dams, electricity transmission and other forms of renewable energy. The government wants to help Manitoba companies and those who wish to locate here bid on some $18 billion in capital projects to be undertaken by Manitoba Hydro over the next decade.
A Saskatoon couple has achieved net-zero energy consumption in their home. The goal was to live normally. We wanted to prove that people don’t have to adjust the way they live. You can be net zero without having to commit to a big lifestyle change. They built the home, located on an acreage just west of Saskatoon, in 2009. It was designed to be as energy-efficient as possible, utilizing south-facing windows to harness passive solar energy and built with triple-thick walls dense with insulation. The final step was the installation of solar panels in 2011. At night and on cloudy days they get their energy from SaskPower, and on sunny days the solar panels compensate for the energy drawn off the grid, so this year they have managed to produce as much energy as they consumed.
Read MoreTransAlta Corp Drops Carbon Capture; Sea Creatures Close Diablo Canyon
TransAlta Corp abandoned plans on Thursday to build a C$1.4 billion carbon capture and storage facility at an Alberta coal-fired electricity plant because it could find no buyers for the carbon dioxide and no way to sell emission-reduction credits. The project was also backed by C$779 million of funds from the Alberta and federal governments. It would have captured and stored a million tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions annually from the 450MW Keephills 3 power plant west of Edmonton..
California was without nuclear power Thursday after a swarm of jellyfish-like creatures forced the shutdown of the Diablo Canyon plant. Plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric took its Unit 2 reactor offline in the morning in response to a days-long invasion of salp — a translucent plankton-eating organism that can rapidly reproduce. Intake pipes for seawater become clogged with the creatures, threatening the plant’s cooling system. The decision leaves California, at least briefly, without nuclear power generation, which ordinarily accounts for about 14 percent of the state’s electricity mix. The second reactor at the Diablo Canyon plant in Avila Beach was taken offline earlier this week for routine fueling and maintenance. The San Onofre nuclear plant between Los Angeles and San Diego has been offline since January as operator Southern California Edison tries to resolve the unusual, rapid degradation of tubes inside recently replaced steam generators. In 2005, a school of anchovies swam too close to the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station, leaving plant workers to clear 11,000 pounds of dead fish from intake filters. In 2004, 14,000 pounds of sardines met the same fate.
Read MoreSaskPower Imports Still Down; Mitsubishi gets SD#7 Gas Gen Order
SaskPower imports at McNeill are unavailable today. The EIA NA storage data was revised resulting from resubmissions of data from one or more respondents caused the stocks for April 13, 2012 to change from 2,512 Bcf to 2,501 Bcf. As a result, the implied net change between the weeks ending April 6 and April 13 changed from 25 Bcf to 23 Bcf.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. has received an order from TransAlta Generation Partnership, a subsidiary of TransAlta Corporation, a major power generation and wholesale marketing company in Canada, to supply two M501GAC gas turbines for installation at the Sundance 7 Power Generation Facility now under construction by TransAlta in Alberta. The gas turbines will be core components of the new natural gas-fired 800MW gas turbine combined cycle power generation plant. GTCC power stations use gas and steam turbines in combination to generate electricity in two stages, utilizing high-temperature exhaust gas from the gas turbine to produce steam to drive the steam turbine. This configuration enables GTCC power plants to achieve higher thermal efficiency, which in turn reduces fuel consumption and lower emissions, ultimately contributing to effective energy utilization and lighter burden on the environment.
North Dakota regulators on Wednesday approved the state’s largest electric transmission project since the 1970s, a 250-mile power line that will link a western North Dakota power plant to a network of rural electric cooperatives. The $312 million project, which its developer expects to complete by the end of 2013, is part of an elaborate power and transmission swap with another utility that has been developing wind energy projects in western North Dakota.
Read MoreMcNeill Imports at 0MW; New Solar/Wind Street Lights; Maine Readies for Tide Power
McNeill is still down for imports into Alberta all day.
EfstonScience, Canada’s science superstore has launched a new division specializing in solar wind powered street lights. Enlighten Solar and Hybrid Lighting Systems are innovative, off-grid light standards that generate electricity from both the sun and wind throughout the day and night to power a high-efficiency LED light. The inclusion of in-pole real-time remote management and monitoring to track device performance, ensure efficiency and allow for easy troubleshooting is exclusive to Enlighten lighting systems, and a first for the US market. The Enlighten Hybrid Lighting Systems combines a Daisy vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) and solar photovoltaic’s to generate enough electricity to power the light standards from dusk until dawn. The high-efficiency LED fixture emits as much light on the street as traditional HID light fixtures, while using only a fraction of the power. Also available for larger areas requiring more light is a VAWT plus two-panel, duo-LED model as well as custom solutions.
Maine regulators on Tuesday put three utilities on the path to distribute electricity harnessed from tides at the nation’s eastern tip, a key milestone in a bid to turn the natural rise and fall of ocean levels into power. The Maine Public Utilities Commission set terms for a contract that would be in place for 20 years. The regulators also directed the three utilities to negotiate with Ocean Renewable Power Co. to put electricity onto the grid this summer, the first long-term power purchase agreements for tidal energy in the United States. Ocean Renewable intends to install its first underwater turbine unit this summer on Cobscook Bay under a demonstration project. Power production will begin modestly, with the first unit producing enough electricity for 20 to 25 homes; the pilot program calls for additional units at sites off both Lubec and Eastport to bring production to 4MW, enough to power up more than 1,000 homes by 2016.
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