By Kennedy Maize Lake Powell, created by the flow of the Colorado River held back by the 1980 Glen Canyon Dam, could soon reach a water supply crisis, according to a new analysis by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation. The same outcome could then face Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead, downstream from Lake Powell. In … More Colorado River hydropower faces potential shutdowns
By Kennedy Maize A federal judge in Montana this month (June 12) killed some 1.5 million acres of oil and gas leases on federal land in Wyoming that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued during the first Trump administration. The ruling also applied to some 185,000 acres of oil and gas leases … More Interior Department oil and gas leasing failures pile up
By Kennedy Maize Reactions to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s landmark action to streamline and coordinate the way artificial intelligence data centers connect to the interstate electric transmission grid are largely positive. Politico headlined its account of the FERC actions: “’Not the old sleepy agency’: Energy regulator dives into fight over data center connections,” The … More Scoping out reactions to FERC’s data centers grid connection action
By Kennedy Maize conundrum noun uk /kəˈnʌn.drəm/ us /kəˈnʌn.drəm/ a problem that is difficult to deal with A unanimous Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday (June 18) took ground-breaking action to try to create some order out of the chaotic and controversial problem of how to connect large electric data center loads created by the burgeoning … More FERC dives into the large load grid connection conundrum
By Kennedy Maize Attorneys general from seven east coast states are challenging the Trump administration’s planned buyout of TotalEnergy’s Interior Department offshore wind leases for $1 billion in taxpayer dollars. It’s one of several cases of Trump’s irrational anti-wind policies clashing against the U.S. legal system and losing. The seven states — New York, Connecticut, … More Trump’s anti-wind agenda hit from multiple directions
By Kennedy Maize An administrative law judge for the Michigan Public Service Committee (MPSC) has advised the regulators to kill a plan by Consumers Energy to essentially give away 13 small, elderly hydropower projects to a Maryland based private equity firm, in return buying power from the dams at above-market rates. The purpose of the … More Michigan utility’s hydro give-away runs into trouble
By Kennedy Maize The U.S. Department of Energy’s 90-day orders to keep coal-fired generating plants running “have been used almost exclusively to prevent the retirement of aging, uneconomic coal units—some of them currently inoperable—by the electric utilities that own them. Yet the plant owners, state regulators, and power grid operators all refute the DOE’s characterizations … More IEEFA challenges DOE’s deceptive, destructive coal plant orders
By Kennedy Maize The same day (June 4) the Trump administration rolled out a billion dollar coal subsidy program, the Department of Energy announced another victim in its program to prevent any U.S. coal-fired power plants from closing. The administration is implementing an unstated, but clear in the application, policy of making sure no U.S. … More DOE orders another uneconomic coal plant to keep running
By Kennedy Maize Warrior Run Generating Station is a 26-year-old, modest 200-MW bituminous coal-fired cogeneration power plant, using modern fluidized bed combustion technology, mothballed in western Maryland, near the picturesque 20,000 population city of Cumberland in the Allegheny Mountains. The plant is also near the historic coal fields of southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern West Virginia. … More Trump administration throws big money at coal, hoping for a revival
By Kennedy Maize Remember fusion? When it comes to the always touted, never delivered promise of unlimited amounts of energy from smashing atoms together, spring turning to summer produces optimistic proclamations of the advent of fusion energy that appear to wither and die when the autumn equinox arrives. How far away is the practical application … More Fusion and confusion with the perhaps-for-never fuel