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Eversource Will Sell 14 New Hampshire Power Plants, Completing Deregulation

October 15, 2017

Fourteen power plants in New Hampshire, including nine hydroelectric facilities, will soon have new owners as Eversource Energy divests its holdings in the state to satisfy an agreement with state regulators. Eversource outlined the sale of the hydro assets, along with three fossil fuel-fired plants and two combustion peaker units, in an October 12 filing with the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission (NHPUC).

The NHPUC is expected to approve the deal, with the transactions expected to close by year-end 2017 or in early 2018. As part of the agreement, the new owners must keep the plants in service for at least 18 months. The ownership change will mark the completion of electric deregulation in New Hampshire and bring rate adjustments to customers in the first half of 2018, according to an Eversource spokesman, who said the Eversource plants were the last operated by a regulated utility in New England.

Eversource now will purchase electricity on the wholesale market, which the utility said will lower rates for its customers.…

EPA Ready to Attack Clean Power Plan

October 8, 2017

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The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering its options to repeal or replace the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the signature climate regulation of former President Barack Obama.

POWER magazine on October 6 obtained a 43-page draft of the EPA’s proposed action on the CPP. The formal document is expected to be released soon. The document notes “The EPA has not determined whether it will promulgate a rule … to regulate greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions from existing EGUs [electric generating units], and, if it will do so, when it will do so and what form that rule will take.”

President Donald Trump has said the CPP violates federal law, something the EPA proposal says it will attempt to determine. Trump has said the emissions regulations could cost power consumers as much as $ 33 billion. He also has called the CPP a “job killer,” and in June said he would pull the U.S. out of the landmark Paris climate agreement after saying that man-made climate change is a “hoax.”…

GE Power Sells Lucrative Water & Process Technologies Division to SUEZ in $3.4B Deal

October 2, 2017

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Less than a week after GE struck a $ 2.6 billion deal with ABB for GE’s electrification business, GE Power completed the $ 3.4 billion sale of its lucrative water and process technologies division to multinational water management firm SUEZ.

The sale of GE Water & Process Technologies, a systems and services provider of water, wastewater and process systems solutions, was completed on September 30 but announced on October 2. According to GE and SUEZ, the division manned by 7,500 employees generated about $ 2.1 billion in revenues for GE in 2016. Today’s announcement, on the heels of last week’s GE-ABB deal, is part of the company’s transition under new CEO John Flannery.

According to Russell Stokes, who replaced Steve Bolze as president and CEO of GE Power in July, the sale of GE Water & Process Technologies is the “next step in GE Power’s business strategy and portfolio transformation.”

Bolze, whose final day at GE was September 30, announced his retirement from GE this June after he lost out to Flannery as successor to CEO Jeff Immelt.…

Wave and Tidal Power Technology Near Commercialization

September 4, 2017

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Scotland, which is authorized to set its own energy policy separate from London’s Westminster government, has set a goal of generating 100% of the nation’s annual electricity needs through only renewable sources by 2020, and 100% of its entire power and transportation needs from non-carbon energy by 2030. This decision has created an all-of-the-above clean development strategy as well as a stronger commitment to energy self-reliance. By looking inward at what internal resources exist, Scotland is now home to the most-advanced wave and tidal energy development center in the world.

For decades, engineers have been trying to turn the immense potential of tidal energy into electricity. While ocean currents don’t reach the same speeds that wind can, the inherent energy potential by comparison is enormous. Seawater has more than 800 times the density of air, so for the same rotor swept area, water moving at 2.5 meters per second (m/sec)—roughly 5 knots—exerts the same amount of force as would be applied by wind blowing at nearly 100 m/sec (about 195 knots).…

Mississippi Power Will Absorb Costs for Failed Kemper Gasification Project

August 23, 2017

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A settlement Mississippi Power reached on August 21 with stakeholders of the Kemper County facility will ensure customers won’t be subjected to rate increases associated with the now-abandoned gasification portion of the project. While that will affect revenues, the resolution could soften controversy surrounding the project and avoid protracted legal and financial turmoil, the company said.

Mississippi Power reached the settlement with Denbury Resources—the company under contract to buy all the project’s captured carbon, and which had already built a 61-mile carbon dioxide pipeline—along with three advocacy groups: the Central Mississippi Building and Construction Trades Council, the East Mississippi Business Development Corp., and the Ministerial Alliance Partnership.

It essentially provides that the annual revenue requirement—which is necessary to cover the power company’s expenses and have the opportunity to earn a fair rate of return—for the 2018 Kemper IGCC–related costs would be $ 126 million, resulting in no rate increase for customers now or in the future. It also proposes to modify the project’s 2010-awarded certificate of public convenience and necessity to limit the facility to operations of the natural gas combined cycle power plant, which was completed in 2014.…

Enviros Call for Court Decision in Clean Power Plan Case

August 7, 2017

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Given that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) isn’t going to be taking any substantial action to rewrite the Clean Power Plan anytime soon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit should not postpone a decision in the court case against the rule, an August 4 document filed by a group of environmental intervenors in the case argues.

The case against the Clean Power Plan was argued in court on September 27, 2016, before a panel of 10 judges. In the more than ten months since the hearing, the court has not issued a decision in the case.

The situation got more complicated after the election of President Donald Trump, an opponent of the rule, and the nomination of former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who had sued the former administration’s EPA over the rule, as the new administrator of the EPA.

Pruitt’s EPA announced right away that it would be reviewing the rule, as he believes it represents an overreach of the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act.…