Higher limits for wholesale power prices were approved by the Public Utility Commission today.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas, which oversees electricity in the state, voted today to raise the limit on how much power providers can charge.
That price – known as the offer cap – happens when the grid gets stretched to capacity. It’s essentially the maximum amount companies can charge for wholesale power. Today the commission tripled the cap from its level of $3,000 earlier in the year to $9,000. (Earlier this summer the commission increased the offer cap to $4,500.)
The hope is that higher profits for generators will result in new power plants. The Texas grid is predicted to fall below its target level of power reserves in a few years, and with low profits for power plants right now, new plants just aren’t being built in Texas’ private, energy-only market.
Some consumer and trade groups are opposed to the change, as it isn’t clear what kind of impact the higher wholesale prices could have on residential customers. The Texas Industrial Energy Consumer group said in a memo to the commission that if the $9,000 price caps were in place during the long, hot year of 2011, it would have added 80 percent to wholesale power prices, an overall increase of $13.3 to $14 billion.
Water rates are rising across rural Texas, say consumer advocates.
The face of the rural Texas water provider is changing. Jim Boyle, a lawyer with the group Texas Rate Payers United, says years ago most water companies were mom and pop operations, owned by families within the communities they served. Then the great roll-up began.
“We have three or four companies that have come into Texas, one from California, one from Pennsylvania,” he recently told the Texas House Committee on County Affairs. “They’ve come to Texas and they’ve bought hundred of subdivisions systems.”
But it’s not the consolidation that ‘s the problem. According to Boyle, it’s what happens afterwards. He says the companies are raising water rates across the state. When rural customers from unincorporated parts of Texas try to challenge the rate hikes before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, they’re faced with nearly insurmountable financial roadblocks.
Good news for Texans: there's likely to be more power available over the next few years than previously thought.
Texas may have some more time before its electric grid gets stretched to the point of blackouts. An updated forecast from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) today says that after the announcement of several new power projects and some other revisions, the outlook for keeping the lights on over the next few years is “significantly different” than they had previously thought.
In May, ERCOT released its latest report on the state of the grid. And it caused some nervousness for saying that by 2014, the grid’s reserve margin would fall below ten percent. The reserve margin is the amount of excess power available at times of peak demand, and the state has a goal of keeping it above 13.75 percent. The further the reserve margin falls, the greater the chance of blackouts when Texas has periods of extreme weather and unexpected power plant shutdowns.
Part of the issue behind the state’s power woes of late is that low natural gas prices (thanks to a fracking boom) also mean lower profits for power producers, as natural gas tends to set the price they can charge for power. In the mostly deregulated Texas market, power plants are built privately. Without the promise of profit, plants simply weren’t being funded. So this summer, the Public Utility Commission of Texasraised the rates power companies can charge during times of peak demand to encourage new generation. Continue Reading →
The A&M AgriLife Irrigation map shows large amounts of agricultural irrigation used in the Texas panhandle, while water demands in Central and East Texas are primarily from municipal users.
Texas irrigation is a big deal. The state is home to more than 10 percent of the irrigated acres in the country. Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension looked into Texas’ agricultural water use in a recent report. It examines Texas’ economic dependence on irrigation, improvements in state-wide irrigation efficiency, and problems the state faces as water reserves dwindle.
Urban vs. Rural:Â Despite Texas’ large cities, most of the water in the state is used for agriculture, 57 percent of it. However, according to the report, farmers use water more efficiently than residential users. Less than 18 inches per year per acre is used on agricultural irrigation in Texas, while residents on average use 22 inches of water annually for their lawns.
Economic Implications: According to the report, 4.7 billion dollars in Texas agriculture relies on irrigation. In the High Plains alone, irrigated agriculture accounts for nearly 9 percent of the Texas economy, including 7,300 jobs. Growing food in Texas also secures availability to produce for the state, the report says, diminishing dependence on more costly imported goods.
Efficiency Improvements: The report also says that since 1970, Texas irrigation has greatly improved in efficiency. Continue Reading →
Rice farmers downstream of the Lower Colorado may get water for their fields next year.
Once again, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA)Â is coming under fire from some Central Texans. The reason? A recommendation by agency staff that could lead to water being sent downstream next year for rice farming.
The LCRA controls some of the more hotly-contested water in the state of Texas. There is business and real estate upstream that relies on good lake levels to thrive; agriculture, power generation and ecosystems downstream that also need a certain amount of water to get by; and in the middle, the City of Austin. Striking a balance between the many interests and finite resources available for them to share has been an ongoing difficulty in recent years for the agency.
Poster at DUG Eagle Ford convention in San Antonio
Hearing some officials talk about the oil boom in South Texas, you’d think the streets were paved with gold.
Yet the reality is the pavement is almost gone in some spots, ripped up by thousands of heavy trucks servicing oil drilling rigs. Some county leaders say the millions of tax dollars that could help fix the damage has all gone to Austin. And now they’re fighting to reroute it back to where they say it’s sorely needed.
Pipe is stacked at the southern site of the Keystone XL pipeline on March 22, 2012 in Cushing, Oklahoma.
This week, the Keystone pipeline had to shut down for days because of possible safety issues on a portion of the line between Missouri and Illinois. The existing Keystone pipeline, which has only been running for a few years, takes heavy oil harvested from sand pits in Canada to refinieries in the Midwest and a massive oil depot in Cushing, Oklahoma. The Keystone XL pipeline will be a large addition to that existing network, and a southern leg is already under construction from Cushing to refineries on the Gulf Coast, facing protests and questions about how the company is using eminent domain to seize private land for the pipeline.
We reached out to Dr. Lara Skinner, Associate Director of Research at Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute, to get her perspective on the current shutdown and some of the safety issues particular to pipelines transporting “diluted bitumen.” That’s heavy, sour oil harvested from the sand pits of Canada and mixed with hydrocarbons so it can flow through a pipeline. Many of the issues with the existing pipeline are relevant to the impending Keystone XL pipeline. Skinner has co-authored two studies on the economic and environmental impact of the new pipeline and is openly critical of the risks that it may pose.
Q: Can you describe for us what’s happening with the existing Keystone pipeline right now?
A: You know, my expertise is really in the Keystone XL pipeline. But in the process of trying to figure out some of the implications of that pipeline, we looked at phase one of the pipeline, Keystone. Specifically looking at what was the potential from spills.
And we looked at the proposals TransCanada was putting in about the projected spill rate of the Keystone XL pipeline. So we looked back and said, ‘Okay, what did they project for the first one and what actually happened?’
Stargazers are in for another treat this weekend. The Orionid meteor shower, an annual occurrence, will make its way across the sky late Saturday night into early Sunday morning.
The best hours to see the meteor shower will be at midnight Saturday until early Sunday morning, with a peak around 2 a.m. StarDate magazine says you can expect to see some 25 meteors per hour. And some of them may look “familiar” — the meteor shower is composed of leftover debris from Halley’s comet.
The sky watchers at StarDate, a publication of the University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory, recommend getting as far away from cities as possible to see the shower. “Look for state or city parks or other safe, dark sites,” they write. “Lie on a blanket or reclining chair to get a full-sky view. If you can see all of the stars in the Little Dipper, you have good dark-adapted vision.” The big, open skies of Texas — if you can get far enough away from city lights — should be perfect for witnessing the event should skies stay clear. No rain is forecast for much of the state for Saturday night into Sunday. And the moon is only at a quarter and will set before midnight, so it shouldn’t interfere with seeing the shower.
More on the astronomy behind the celestial wonder from StarDate: Continue Reading →
100 tons of iron dust were dumped into the Pacific in a misguided effort to combat climate change by fostering the growth of plankton. In this NASA satellite image, an enormous bloom of phytoplankton are seen off the coast of Norway in 2004.
A California environmentalist is in hot water after dumping over a hundred tons of iron sulfate into the cold currents of the Pacific.
George spent part of July in a fishing boat off the Haida Gwaii islands of British Columbia, scattering the red dust in an effort to cause a growth of plankton and help reverse climate change, according to various media reports. The story was first published in The Guardian.
The eco avenger justified the caper to the New York Times by saying that the iron dust was used as a “fertilizer” to cause plankton growth, which can help eat up carbon in the atmopshere. (And he also noted that plankton could help salmon recover in the region.)
Before the Clean Water Act, two-thirds of waterways were deemed unsafe for fishing and swimming, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In a look back at the act today, EPA Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water Nancy Stoner writes that until the act was passed, “municipal and household wastes flowed untreated into our rivers, lakes and streams. Harmful chemicals were poured into the water from factories, chemical manufacturers, power plants and other facilities.”
There was public pressure at the time to sign the act into law. In June 1969, an oil slick on the Cuyahoga river in Ohio actually caught fire, burning for half an hour and causing fifty thousand dollars in damage. Lake Erie was deemed a “giant cesspool,” with only three of its 62 beaches rated completely safe for swimming.
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