BPA - Elliot Mainzer takes the key role in developing energy agency policy on climate change, planning and renewables
As renewable energy becomes a bigger slice of the Northwest's energy pie, few institutions have as important a role to play as the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that markets electricity generated at 31 dams and a nuclear plant in the region.
BPA's regionwide web of transmission lines delivers electrons generated at wind farms east of the Cascades to power-hungry consumers in the Willamette Valley. The agency's flexibility to modulate electricity production at dams on the Columbia allows utilities to safely feed their spiky supply of wind energy onto the grid.
While the arguments rage on both sides, the experts say that time is running out
For the workers at Oldbury-on-Severn nuclear power plant, the next new year celebrations could be rather poignant. Just as Britain is planning the rebirth of nuclear power generation, their ageing plant will be closing down, probably on December 31. Oldbury, in Gloucestershire, has been pouring power into the national grid since 1967 and is the latest in a series of closures that has seen Britain's nuclear generating capacity fall from nearly 40% of the nation's needs in the 1980s to just 15% now. Most of the slack has been taken up by new gas-fired stations.
Builders and developers who install solar hot water on new homes are now eligible to receive a $1,000 discount. The discount is currently available for installations carried out before March 31, 2009.
Eligible new buildings include single-family residences or small multi-unit residences without a common entrance and comprising less than 600 square meters of building area - or three or fewer stories of building height.
These new incentives are available through registered SolarBC contractors, who will provide you with technical advice, professional installation services and will help you apply for your $1000 discount
Global wind power capacity reached 94,100 megawatts by the end of 2007, up 27 percent from the previous year, and then topped 100,000 megawatts by April 2008.1 (See Figure 1.) The roughly 20,000 megawatts installed in 2007 was 31 percent above the 2006 record for capacity additions.2 (See Figure 2.) New wind installations were second only to natural gas in the United States as an additional source of power capacity and were the leading source of new capacity in the European Union (EU).3
The state began its pursuit of offshore wind generation Tuesday, a move that could lead to building 400-foot-tall turbines off Ocean City.
The Maryland Energy Administration asked wind developers to express their interest in building industrial-size windmills a dozen or more miles off the state's 31-mile Atlantic coastline. At the same time, the energy agency said it is launching a study to gauge the economic viability and environmental impact of such a project.
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