Energy Archives

Lake Oroville’s Depleted Water Levels May Force Power Plant to Shut Down for the First Time Ever

June 21, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /SF Gateby Amanda Bartlette

Water lines on the banks of Lake Oroville in Butte County have depleted so rapidly that the reservoir’s hydroelectric power plant may have to shut down for the first time ever, straining an already encumbered power grid during the hottest part of the summer, California officials announced Thursday.

Since 1967, the Edward Hyatt Power Plant has been a crucial source of electricity for the area and usually has the capacity to power up to 800,000 homes, pumping water from the lake through its underground facilities, according to CNN. However, water levels are currently approaching 700 feet, exacerbated by a severe drought and triple-digit temperatures.

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Can Hydropower Help Solve the Climate Crisis? This $63-Billion Plan is Banking On It

May 6, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

Conservationists in California and across the West are deeply skeptical of hydropower, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s a long history of government agencies damming spectacular canyons, choking off rivers, obliterating fish populations and cutting off access to Indigenous peoples. It’s a history detailed in books such as “Cadillac Desert,” and experienced by anyone who has spent time fishing, kayaking or swimming in the region’s reshaped waterways, or hiking alongside them.

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New Threat To Humboldt County Drinking Water Prompts State Action

March 17, 2021/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /Jefferson Public Radioby Daniel Mintz

Of concern is potentially migrating dioxins from pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative that was used at the mill site before being banned in the mid-1980s. In response, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has hired an engineering firm to do a new round of testing at the site.

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Opinion: Don’t be Smug About Texas’ Troubles. California Isn’t Prepared for Disasters Either

February 25, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /Los Angeles Timesby Lucy Jones

The collapse of the power grid in Texas last week, and the cascading infrastructure failures that resulted from it, are stark examples of why a proactive government matters. A complete evaluation will surely show that, like most accidents and failures, many factors played a role, but it is already easy to see that the avoidance of government regulation contributed to the cold-weather chaos.

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Go With the Flow: Battery System in Bonita to be Tested for Use in Microgrids

January 29, 2021/in Media Coverage, San Diego County /by Mike Lee /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Rob Nikolewski

A battery storage demonstration project already providing a carbon-free source of electricity to California’s grid is about to be tested to see how well it can work on microgrids.

Located on a bluff at a San Diego Gas & Electric substation in Bonita, the energy storage project uses vanadium redox flow battery technology that stores electricity when the grid has excess supply and then discharges the energy when the power system needs it.

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Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, AES Pursue Nation’s First Solar-Powered Pumped Hydro Project

January 15, 2021/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Utility Diveby Robert Walton

Kauai Island Utility Cooperative and AES Corp. have executed and filed a power purchase agreement with Hawaii regulators to develop a solar-powered pumped hydro storage project the utility says will bring its total resource mix above 80% renewables. The West Kauai Energy Project could come online in 2024.

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Year-End Deal Includes Major Energy, Environment Wins

December 21, 2020/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Chelsea Campos /E&E Newsby Geof Koss, Jeremy Dillon and Emma Dumain

While negotiators largely sidelined energy issues during months of stalled talks on COVID-19 relief, a number of significant energy and environmental provisions will hitch a ride on the year-end agreement set to pass today.

House and Senate leaders yesterday announced they had reached a deal on a $1.4 trillion fiscal 2021 spending omnibus, pandemic relief legislation and a number of major items that will ride along. Final text had yet to be released by publication time.

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Water Harvesting Tech for PV Panel Cleaning and Cooling

December 17, 2020/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /PV Magazineby Emiliano Bellini

An international research team has proposed to use nighttime radiative cooling to harvest water from PV panels and reuse it for module cleaning during the daytime. According to their findings, the proposed system has, also, a beneficial effect on the modules’ operating temperature.

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Opinion: Our Future Rests on Climate Action

November 20, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /CalMattrsby Eleni Kounalakis

California is on fire. And the wildfires we’ve seen already this year are not just alarming – they’re a forewarning. In 2020 alone, record temperatures and tens of thousands of dry lightning strikes led our state to experience five of its six largest wildfires in recorded history.

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Globalized Economy Making Water, Energy and Land Insecurity Worse: Study

October 27, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Phys.Orgby University of Cambridge

The first large-scale study of the risks that countries face from dependence on water, energy and land resources has found that globalisation may be decreasing, rather than increasing, the security of global supply chains.

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