Public Power Daily

The Board of Aldermen in New Bern, North Carolina, earlier this month gave the go-ahead to $5.6 million in funding for the final phase of a project by the New Bern Department of Public Utilities to install advanced meters and new load management switches that will help shave peak load for the public power town.

Utilities are traveling down the road to the unknown as they try to prepare for their state's compliance with a federal carbon dioxide emissions reduction requirement — the Clean Power Plan.

A group in Klamath County, Oregon, working to create a people's utility district recently brought its ballot initiative to the county government.

Coal production in the United States declined by an estimated 109 million short tons, or 11 percent, in 2015, according to Energy Information Administration figures.

Under an energy plan approved Jan. 11 by the Town Council in the public power community of Berlin, Maryland, the Berlin Electric Department will strive to improve the town's energy efficiency and ramp up its use of renewable energy over the next few years.

A new solar energy farm built at the site of an old landfill is producing electricity for the municipal electric utility in Riverside, California and has pushed the city's total solar generation past the 25-megawatt mark, five years ahead of schedule.

It is crucial for owners of power plants to evaluate whether they are better off under a rate- or mass-based plan in response to the Environmental Protection Agency's final Clean Power Plan, a study commissioned by the American Public Power Association and completed in late December said. The report also said that large-scale interstate trading will provide individual EGUs more flexibility to determine the best compliance strategy.

The Central Municipal Power Agency/Services is exploring low-risk, low-cost community solar to provide renewable power to its members.