Public Power Daily

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas expects record peak demand and thin reserve margins this summer, making it more likely the grid operator will need to issue alerts to draw on resources such as demand response.

U.S. net electricity generation increased by 4% in 2018, reaching a record high of 4,178 million megawatt hours, the Energy Information Administration reported.

The American Public Power Association and 133 public power utilities and associations on March 1 sent a letter to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., supporting legislation she has introduced that would overturn actions by the Federal Communications Commission to regulate public power pole attachments despite the clear public power exemption in section 224 of the Communications Act.

The Chambersburg Electric Department, a Pennsylvania public power utility, on Feb. 25 sold a $9,315,000 capital improvements bond to raise resources to invest in the Borough of Chambersburg’s public power system.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District announced on March 1 that it is canceling the proposed Colusa-Sutter Transmission Line Project effective immediately. The public power utility’s decision to exit the project at this time comes early enough that SMUD will save approximately $4 million in this planning phase.

Tallahassee, Florida, has adopted a goal of getting all its energy from renewable resources by 2050.

Public power utilities recently set mutual aid efforts in motion in the wake of turbulent weather conditions at the end of February that included strong winds, a blizzard and a tornado that caused power outages in parts of the Midwest, the Northeast and the South.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center announced an agreement to improve information sharing among the organizations and their members with the goal of strengthening the cyber security of the nation’s critical electric infrastructure.