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Some stuck without power powerless to fight bank fees Friday, September 19, 2008 By Margaret Harding THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH When his power returned without Internet service Monday, Tom Perry had a bit of a financial freakout. "It was kind of a panic-stricken moment there: 'Oh, no, what am I going to do?' " said Perry, whose credit-card and mortgage payment were both due that day. Perry, like many others, pays his bills online. Online banking and bill payment are pushed as the easiest and most efficient ways to handle such transactions, but a power outage such as the one central...

Two new utilities have joined a group of existing Texas transmission owners seeking state approval to build more than $5 billion in new power lines needed to tap the state's abundant wind generation. The group will file a detailed proposal of its construction plan with the Texas Public Utility Commission on Friday, according to a press release. New lines are needed to move electricity from the state's windiest areas in the west to power-hungry cities. The commission wants to see enough new transmission to accommodate about 18,500 megawatts of wind generation by 2012. The existing transmission operator group includes Dallas-based...

Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands. The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not. The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads. “We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen...

The Energy Challenge When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing. That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new...

We haven't talked about a good environmentalist wild-west style shootout in a while. Authorites in California have endorsed the construction of a 150 mile electricity transmisson line to carry power from wind and solar projects in the desert to San Diego. State law requires utilities to supply 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2010 – a benchmark SDG&E has said it cannot meet. The San Diego utility supplies 6% today. Unfortunately the transmission lines are proposed to go through some pretty areas and some environmentalists aren't too happy. “The idea that we’re going to sacrifice critical pieces of...

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats. To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this...

Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country's largest power providers say the problems that turned out the lights on 50 million people have largely been resolved, but they fear that larger, systemic issues could soon lead to even bigger and more damaging outages.

<p>Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country's largest power providers say the problems that turned out the lights on 50 million people have largely been resolved, but they fear that larger, systemic issues could soon lead to even bigger and more damaging outages.</p>

Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK - News) and American Electric Power (AEP) (NYSE: AEP - News) have formed a 50-50 wholly-owned joint venture to build and operate 240 miles of extra-high-voltage 765-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines and related facilities in Indiana The project, called Pioneer Transmission LLC, would link Duke Energy's Greentown Station (near Kokomo, Ind.) with AEP's Rockport Station (east of Evansville, Ind.). The project will expand extra-high-voltage transmission to -- Improve the reliability of the nation's transmission grid -- Enhance the efficiency and reliability of the region's transmission operators - Midwestern Independent System Operator (MISO) and PJM Interconnection (PJM) --...

Cutting photocopier costs was once Randall Swisher's top concern, now it's redrawing the United States' power grid into a $60 billion superhighway. When Swisher became executive director of the industry group the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in 1989, he had four employees and fuel was cheap. So the energy business largely ignored him. Ten years ago, cutting office costs topped the agenda. Swisher commissioned American Electric Power (AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the country's largest electricity transmitter and one of its largest power generators, to map how a new national network of power lines could potentially distribute wind...

Utility asks Brooklyn residents to avoid air-conditioning use despite heat wave Consolidated Edison Inc. urged thousands of customers to stop all non-essential electricity use as parts of Brooklyn, N.Y., suffered a power outage Sunday in the midst of heat wave. Con Ed said the outage had affected about 2,100 customers but that it had restored power to approximately 600 of those as of 11 a.m. Eastern time. As a result, it issued an appeal to those in the New York City borough's Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Borough Park, and Park Slope neighborhoods "to discontinue their use of non-essential electrical appliances,...

California state Sen. Jack Scott says he didn't intend to "be a party pooper." It's just that helium-filled foil balloons -- like those found at hospital gift shops and office parties -- are dangerous. They float into electric lines and cause power outages, more than 800 in California last year, utilities say. He drafted a bill to ban foil balloons; it sailed through the state Senate and now awaits a vote in the Assembly. ***** The pro-balloon people are hoping that even if the bill does pass, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will veto it. At a recent news conference, the governor...

BROOKHAVEN, N.Y. (MarketWatch) -- On the ground beneath a forest of power transmission towers in suburban Long Island, experimental wires cooled by liquid nitrogen carried 138,000 volts in flat strands about the size of linguini. Power executives, engineers, and the media gathered recently to officially throw the switch at the $60 million Holbrook Superconductor project, the world's first transmission power cable transmitting waves of electricity from the grid to a substation that feeds actual U.S. homes. Surrounded by stainless steel tubing and insulation, the three superconductors at Holbrook move power down a corridor only four feet wide. The 600-meter-long underground...

With fires still causing concern among California power grid operators, this week brings high heat that may lead to near-record electricity demand throughout the state, the grid manager said on Monday. The California Independent System Operator asked consumers to curb their power use in the peak 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. period Tuesday through Thursday as the grid nears capacity. The Cal ISO manages lines owned by the three big investor-owned utilities that handle 80 percent of the state's power flow. "This is going to be the first significant heat wave of the summer," said Cal ISO spokeswoman Stephanie McCorkle....

Take a wild guess Only 2 percent of the nation's electricity comes from so-called "renewable" sources -- wind turbines, solar panels and geothermal plants. Environmentalists dream of taking that number up to 100 percent, making all of America's utilities carbon-free. Getting even a tenth of the way toward that goal will require an awful lot of time and money. For one thing, getting that "green" electricity from the remote, open areas where the wind blows, the sun shines and the land is cheap to the urban areas that consume most of the nation's power will take thousands of miles of...

Fallout from The Energy Policy Act of 2005 by Diane M. Grassi, Featured Writer February 26, 2008 “Energy independence from foreign sources.” A mantra repeated over and over again by Al Gore, by the Hollywood elite and by candidates running for the 2008 Presidential nomination. But rarely is it ever pointed out how this phrase is but an oxymoron with respect to United States energy policy, which becomes ever more vulnerable, not just as the result of its failing infrastructure, but from misguided public policy decisions. And never is the topic broached publicly in how much of the US energy...

Experts peg wind power line cost at $3 bln a year. Texas billionaire and wind energy developer Boone Pickens said at a hearing in Washington Tuesday that the U.S. is exporting about $700 billion a year to feed its oil addiction, as he joined the call from energy leaders to use nuclear, natural gas, coal, wind, biofuels and solar to wean the country off imported crude. According to the Department of Energy, an investment of $60 billion in new transmission capacity is needed between now and 2030 to enable wind power to supply 20% of U.S. electricity. The cost would...

Duke Energy and smart grid company GridPoint said on Thursday that they have found a way for people to charge plug-in hybrid cars in a way that won't bring the power grid to its knees. "If suddenly you have 20,000 or 30,000 rechargeable cars--with maybe 50,000 in a few years--plugging into the grid at night, utilities have to react to that or you'll have serious problems," Lewis said in an October interview. "You see plug-in hybrids becoming a big issue; it's a tidal wave coming at utilities."

Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:11pm EST HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service to some large customers, the grid agency said on Wednesday. Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said a decline in wind energy production in west Texas occurred at the same time evening electric demand was building as colder temperatures moved into the state. The grid operator went directly to the second stage of an emergency plan at 6:41...

Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst said this week. Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong. Criminals have launched online attacks that disrupted power equipment in several regions outside of the U.S., he said, without identifying the countries affected. The goal of the attacks was extortion, he said. "We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into...

Several cities outside the U.S. have sustained attacks on utility systems and extortion demands. Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities, a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst said this week. Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong. Criminals have launched online attacks that disrupted power equipment in several regions outside of the U.S., he said, without identifying the countries affected. The goal of the attacks was extortion, he said....

Saturday, January 19, 2008 International computer hackers threatening to hold cities ransom January 18, 2008 CIA says hackers pulled plug on overseas power grid Overseas attacks recently declassified, but some details obscure By Robert McMillan (IDG News Service) -- Criminals have been able to hack into computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities, a Central Intelligence Agency analyst said this week. Speaking at a conference of security professionals on Wednesday, CIA analyst Tom Donahue disclosed the recently declassified attacks while offering few specifics on what actually went wrong. Criminals have launched online attacks that disrupted power...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Iraq's power grid is on the brink of collapse because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provinces that are unplugging local power stations from the national grid, officials said Saturday. Electricity Ministry spokesman Aziz al-Shimari said power generation nationally is only meeting half the demand, and there had been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days. The shortages across the country are the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, he said. Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few...

China affected by power grid problems Junichi Miura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer China's electricity output has been rising more than 10 percent every year since 2000, almost perfectly parallel to its macroeconomic growth rate. But China's power grid is threatening to become a serious Achilles' heel for its economy. The installation of new power transmission lines in China has been lagging badly behind the fast increase in power generation. The grid has been improving at only a single-digit pace per year--as low as about 2 percent--over the same period. As a result, China's coastal areas, the heart of its...

All Western Europe touched by the electric breakdown PARIS - All Western Europe was struck Saturday evening by electric breakdowns related to an important failure of the German grid system of electricity, indicated in the night of Saturday to Sunday the Grid system of French electricity RTE. Some five million French, is approximately 10% of the population, were private of electricity on this occasion. "They are approximately 5 million consumers who were private" of current, with AFP a door of RTE declared. They "were gradually réalimentées between 22H30 and 23H00", it added. "Of the similar cuts took place in...

AN ARCHITECT has been jailed for at least 15 years after becoming the first person convicted of planning a terrorist attack on Australian soil. Faheem Khalid Lodhi was today jailed for a maximum term of 20 years for acting in preparation for a terrorist attack. He sat quietly in the dock as Justice Anthony Whealy told the NSW Supreme Court Lodhi had intended to "advance violent giant jihad" in Australia. Lodhi, who was born in Pakistan but has Australian citizenship, had pleaded not guilty to all charges. Justice Whealy said the attack, if carried out, "would instil terror into members...

Australian sentenced for scheme targeting nation's electricity supply 08/22/06 11:45 PM, EDT An Australian man was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for a nascent plot to attack the country's power grid that the judge said was aimed at making Australians live in constant fear of bomb attacks.

Blackout sweeps across southeast Texas

There was a massive power outage Wednesday evening in at least seven counties in the Houston area. By 8 p.m. the following counties were confirmed to have experienced the blackout: Liberty, Montgomery, Polk, San Jacinto, Trinity, Grimes and Walker. Two power facilities in Willis have failed, although it's not known if the failures are the cause or one of the results of the outage. St. Lukes Hospital in The Woodlands and Conroe Regional Medical Center are both operating on generator power, although it's not believed to be affecting patient care. Michelle Lyons with the Texas Department of Corrections said that...

California and federal energy officials warned Thursday that the electricity system in Southern California would face hard times this summer, especially if the weather was unusually hot, and that next summer might be even rougher. The southern half of the state "is the worst electricity supply situation in the entire country," Joseph Kelliher, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at an electricity conference in San Francisco. "It's indisputable that there are problems, and some problems have remained for some time," he said. FERC Chairman Patrick H. Wood III, reflecting on the chaotic blackout days of the California...

The state's electricity grid operator remains "at high risk of future financial malfeasance" unless major changes are made, the Texas comptroller said Monday. In a letter to lawmakers, Carole Keeton Strayhorn called for the creation of a fraud task force to oversee the use of contractors and other expenditures at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT oversees the flow of electricity through most of the state and directs a $27 billion deregulated power market. Though ERCOT has been implementing new policies, Mrs. Strayhorn said her office's recent review found irregularities in contracts and reimbursements for companies doing millions of...

Northern Indiana Public Service Co. has complained to federal regulators that its customers are getting squeezed as utilities ComEd and AEP ship electricity through its system. The public utility that serves natural gas and electricity customers in Northwest Indiana wants to eclipse potential energy-flow issues this summer. Utility operators still have fresh memories of the Great Blackout of Aug. 14, 2003, when an outage starting in Ohio darkened eight states and parts of Canada. NIPSCO was spared from that blackout, though its system suffered power surges in its early stages. NIPSCO wants the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to speed up...

First paragraph at end..... While the market hub known as Mid-C or Mid-Columbia is only seconds away from Southern California on the DC Intertie, Platt's reports that traders require a 31% risk margin for transactions in California's administered markets versus transactions in the Pacific Northwest's open markets. The language in the Office of Management and Budget proposal is not clear whether the intention is to raise BPA's wholesale rates to market rates on the West Coast or to bring rates to national levels. The proposal to bring rates to national levels would make little sense as a market solution, because...

Nevada showdown pits coal plant proponents against advocates of renewable resources. L.A. is seen as playing a key role in the outcome. About 100 miles north of Reno, outside a desert town named Gerlach — whose slogan is "where the pavement ends and the West begins" — a quarrel is simmering that highlights the competing visions for the future of electricity production in the United States. And in a curious political twist, Los Angeles may find itself playing a deciding role in the dispute, a showdown between "green power" and coal power. Near the site of the annual Burning Man...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The governors of four Western states announced their support Monday for the building of 1,300 miles of power lines that would carry electricity from the coal fields of Wyoming to energy-starved Southern California. In a memorandum of agreement, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal established a compact that will try to speed government and regulatory approvals for the power lines and the plants that would generate the electricity. "There's a growing recognition in the West that what was once viewed exclusively as a...

A controversial plan to slap sky-high electric rates on large power consumers to encourage energy conservation during key times this summer should be postponed, an administrative law judge has ruled. The California Public Utilities Commission judge reviewing so-called critical peak pricing plans from San Diego Gas & Electric and two other large utilities concluded there was insufficient time to implement the programs this summer. The judge, Michelle Cooke, instead suggests considering similar plans for next year or 2007 as part of a comprehensive rate redesign. At the earlier urging of the commission, SDG&E had presented a proposal to triple rates...

By Justin Blum, Washington Post Staff Writer Fri, Mar 11, 2005 Hundreds of times a day, hackers try to slip past cyber-security into the computer network of Constellation Energy Group Inc., a Baltimore power company with customers around the country. "We have no discernable way of knowing who is trying to hit our system," said John R. Collins, chief risk officer for Constellation, which operates Baltimore Gas and Electric. "We just know it's being hit." Hackers have caused no serious damage to systems that feed the nation's power grid, but their untiring efforts have heightened concerns that electric companies have...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed two East Bay residents to the board overseeing the agency that operates the state's electrical power grid. Elizabeth Lowe, 41, of Danville has served as vice president of Onsite Energy Corp. since 1997; earlier she was vice president of Western operations for DukeSolutions, Inc. Lowe is a member of the Power Association of Northern California, the International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses and the California League of Food Processors. She is registered to vote without a party affiliation. Mason Willrich, 71, of Piedmont was president and CEO of PG&E Enterprises before becoming an independent consultant advising clients...

Compiling a list of suspicious incidents nationwide, including train derailments, chemical/oil refinery fires and or explosions, etc. Don't forget to include news link for source. Please send to my attention.

PHOENIX (AP) -- They look like cobwebs or huge balls of spaghetti hanging from electric poles across Mexico, gigantic clusters of illegal electric lines known as diablitos, or "little devils." Dentist Benjamin Rodriguez has one hanging outside his window in the Xochimilco neighborhood of Mexico City. Like an evil parasite, it makes his lights flicker and stops his dental drill. Occasionally, the transformer across the street explodes. "Six or seven times a year, the power just goes out completely," Rodriguez said. "You call the power company and they come and cut all the illegal lines and the next day they're...

Southern California may have a tough time keeping the lights on this summer, state energy officials said Friday. Officials from the California Public Utilities Commission and the operator of the state's transmission grid said a combination of growing demand for power, aging generating plants and not enough transmission lines could dim lights.State Sen. Martha Escutia, D-Norwalk, who heads the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, said Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should convene an "energy summit" on power blackouts and other electricity problems.

KUALA LUMPUR: Power blackouts hit five Malaysian states on Thursday, sending several cities, including Kuala Lumpur, into semi-darkness. Witnesses reported blackouts in Selangor, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Pahang and Johor states. Several parts of the Klang Valley, including Putrajaya, were affected by the power failure which occurred at about 12.30 pm, eye-witnesses said. They added that areas like Damansara, Bangsar, Hulu Klang, Petaling Jaya and Shah Alam in Selangor were hit by the blackout. Power was also down in Kuala Lumpur's 88-storey twin towers...

‘Pakistani terror suspect had bomb plans’ SYDNEY: A Pakistani-born man accused of planning terrorist attacks had maps of Australia’s power grid, aerial photographs of defence installations and bomb-making instructions in his possession when he was arrested, a court was told here on Tuesday. Architect Faheem Khalid Lodhi, 34, was also alleged in October 2001 to have acted “in an apparent official capacity” at a training camp in Lahore, operated by the banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba. “The camp specialised in urban warfare,” prosecutor Richard Maidment told Sydney’s Central Local Court at the opening of a committal hearing to decide if there...

Thomas Gibson, Nancy McKeon, Brian Dennehy, Dianne Wiest and Randy Quaid star in this four-hour mini-series event. The natural disaster drama is about three enormous weather systems that ultimately collide over Chicago, creating the worst super-storm in the nation's history--but only after they first cause the national power grid to collapse, making it impossible to warn anyone about the impending disaster. A few days shy of retiring from his job as chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service's storm prediction center, Andy Goodman (Dennehy) begins to follow three separate and potentially devastating weather systems--a cluster of tornadoes in the west,...

Design-build delivery rightfully has earned credit for unclogging many congested highways. But in a remote, rugged stretch of central California, design-build now is about to clear a different sort of traffic jam. In an innovative partnership teaming the U.S. Dept. of Energy, a private developer and an investor-owned utility, a contractor is completing an 84-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line in the San Joaquin Valley that will relieve a longtime bottleneck on a grid segment called Path 15. The line’s 1,500 megawatts of additional transmission capacity will provide flexibility "to move generation up and down the state to meet the load demands,"...

A year after the nation's worst blackout, federal regulators issued a scathing review of the electricity industry's voluntary efforts to make their power grids more reliable. Industry audits play down shortcomings of the grid system and rely on ambiguous standards that often are ignored, according to a staff report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California's power grid manager has issued a power watch, urging residents to cut back their electricity usage. ... McCorkle said as temperatures climb into triple digits, consumers should reduce usage ... Demand may reach 44,700 megawatts, surpassing the one-day record usage of 44,360 megawatts set July 21, when the last power watch was issued, McCorkle said.

WASHINGTON - There is growing frustration among many power-industry officials and watchdogs that, one year after the country's biggest blackout, electric reliability rules are still voluntary. They worry that as the memory of that day fades, the momentum to improve the grid will, too. Related Quotes EXCDJIANASDAQ^SPC 36.019815.331776.89N/A +0.48-147.70-44.74N/A delayed 20 mins - disclaimerQuote Data provided by Reuters   Routine surveillance of the industry has been ratcheted-up in recent months, with government and industry engineers publishing their findings online. However, outside experts and even those involved in the so-called audits expect only a short-term benefit from a compliance strategy that relies...

Programs are addressing reliability improvement but rebuilding infrastructure is still the key As the first anniversary of the 2003 Northeast blackout approaches, projects and programs to improve reliability are under way. But experts warn that the 46 recommendations of a joint U.S.-Canadian task force designed to improve system reliability fail to address what one source calls “the basic problem”of serious underinvestment in the grid. “Make reliability standards mandatory and enforceable, with penalties for noncompliance,” reads the first recommendation of the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force, released in April (ENR 4/12 p. 12). But the provision to do that is...