Even though the Alberta Utilities Commission dismissed Strathcona County’s appeal of the Heartland Transmission Project, the municipality isn’t prepared to give up fighting. The county is keeping its eye on an Alberta Court of Appeals case that is asking for the need of the 500-kV transmission line to be argued.

The MSA quarterly report for Q1 is available at http://www.albertamsa.ca and is well worth a read. Of particular interest is the assessment of a coal unit that was dispatched off due to its high price in the Merit Order – or economic withholding on March 1, 2012. While the unit was offline, those generators long in the market priced up their generation offers in response to the tightness. The average pool price for March 1-2 was $330.94/MWh and contributed over 40% of the average pool price for the month of March ($51.08/MWh). The MSA goes on to say “This is another instance of market behavior leading to a loss of static efficiency. The state of the market work currently ongoing will attempt to assess whether the observed loss of static efficiency is counterbalanced by other sources of efficiency”. So what’s to stop several coal units doing this at the same time?

Maxim Power Corp. announced that it has entered into agreements to secure firm natural gas transportation service for the 190 MW Deerland Peaking Station located near Bruderheim in Alberta’s industrial heartland. Entering into these agreements is critical to meeting target commercial operation date of Q4 2013. Deerland is the only shovel-ready permitted natural gas-fired peaking project in Alberta. MAXIM has received all required regulatory approvals to construct and operate D1. The Corporation has engaged engineering and construction support services to commence construction in 2012.

David Anderson, Parliamentary Secretary to the Honourable Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources, has underscored that the ongoing growth and success of Canada’s hydropower industry are essential both to meeting the country’s economic and environmental goals and to the Government’s objective of creating jobs, growth and prosperity. Speaking at the 2012 Forum on Hydropower sponsored by the Canadian Hydropower Association, Anderson emphasized the importance of responsible energy development to Canada’s economic growth. Hydropower generates 60% of Canada’s non-emitting electricity supply, and Canada is the world’s third-largest producer of hydroelectricity. The hydropower industry, including major construction projects, generates high-quality jobs for tens of thousands of Canadians across the country.

Emera Inc. announced today that it has exchanged certain previously acquired subscription receipts into 12 million common shares of Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. at a price of C$5.00 per common share.Emera owns 8.523 million previously acquired common shares of Algonquin.

The Ontario Progressive Conservatives announced plans Monday to privatize Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One, saying it’s time government stopped running the province’s electricity system. The Tories want to open the two huge utilities to private investments in a staged process, starting by offering a minority stake to Ontario-based public sector pension funds. The minority stake sales of OPG and Hydro One would be followed by an initial public offering of shares to both institutional and retail investors, PC Leader Tim Hudak told the Ontario Power Summit last week.

Engineers working for the American Department of Energy have managed to turn the mechanical energy produced by harmless viruses into electricity. The nano-technicians at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are claiming a world first with their generator, which “harnesses the piezoelectric properties of a biological material”. Their generator is built around the M13 bacteriophage, which is 880 nanometers in length with has a diameter of 6.6 nanometers. Importantly, the M13 bacteriophage is benign to people as it only attacks bacteria. The team applied an electrical field to a film of M13 viruses (approximately 2700 charged proteins) and watched what happened using a specially designed microscope. They report: “Helical proteins that coat the viruses twisted and turned in response — a sure sign of the piezoelectric effect at work.” The team next used genetic engineering to increase the virus’ piezoelectrical abilities. As explained in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, they added “four negatively charged amino acid residues to one end of the helical proteins that coat the virus”. These “increased the charge difference between the proteins’ positive and negative ends, which boosted the voltage of the virus”. They also experimented with stacking single layers of the virus on top of each other and found that 20 layers “exhibited the strongest piezoelectric effect”. A generator was created around a one centimetre square film of these layered, genetically modified viruses, which was then sandwiched between two gold-plated electrodes. This was then connected by wires to a liquid-crystal display. The team reports: “When pressure was applied to the generator, it produces up to six nanoamperes of current and 400 millivolts of potential. That’s enough current to flash the number ’1′ on the display, and about a quarter the voltage of a triple A battery.”

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.