Transmission

Vattenfall awards Siemens Energy contract for wind turbines; Minnesota Power to build solar energy array at Minnesota National Guard Camp Ripley; Echelon agrees to sell grid operations to S&T AG; DTE Energy teams with Ford Motor Company to build Michigan’s largest solar array.

Duke Energy Progress agreed to purchase $1.2 billion in generating assets from North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency; ABB won a $400 million order that would create the first electricity link between Newfoundland and the North American power grid; Siemens Energy secured an order for a total capacity of 36 MW in Germany; NextEra Energy Partners’ Bluewater Wind Energy Center in Ontario began commercial operation; the Department of Energy took the first step toward issuing a $150 million loan guarantee to support construction of the Cape Wind offshore wind project; and others ...

(September 2014) Our annual ranking of shareholder performance tracks the long-term returns of leading utilities. But can it predict success in a transformed energy market?

Linda Blair, executive v.p. and chief business officer for grid giant ITC, discusses how ITC plans to navigate the new transmission landscape and where ITC might turn for its next major transmission project.

Weather and GIS are being combined in new ways to provide better storm threat assessments - helping utilities create increasingly effective battle plans to defend against approaching storms.

Utility distribution lines increasingly are going underground, but costs are still prohibitive for replacing existing overhead lines.

An independent system operator for the distribution network could allow utilities to invest in rooftop solar behind the meter and within territory.

Wireless sensors open new, novel applications for utilities, replacing expensive cabling network options to sense incipient equipment failures.

The latest fallout from the April 2013 Metcalf incident: the unprecedented assault with high-powered rifles on PG&E’s Metcalf substation, in Silicon Valley, which disabled 17 of 20 large transformers.

Data from ERCOT indicates that energy intensity is falling markedly, as measured in terms of kWh usage per number of nonfarm jobs. That suggests much less future load growth, yet EIA data based on nationwide scenarios do not seem to agree.