Stretching wire generates current

Port of Vancouver Wind Turbine Blades arrive from China for a Saskatchewan wind farm, showcasing record oversized cargo logistics, tandem crane handling, renewable energy capacity, and North America's longest blades from Goldwind.

Key Points

Record-length blades for a Canadian wind farm, boosting renewable energy and requiring heavy-lift logistics at the port.

✅ 27 blades unloaded via tandem cranes with cage supports

✅ 50 turbines headed to Assiniboia over 21 weeks

✅ Largest 250 ft blades to arrive; reduced CO2 vs coal

A set of 220-foot-long wind turbine blades arrived at the Port of Vancouver from China over the weekend as part a shipment bound for a wind farm in Canada, alongside BC generating stations coming online in the region.

They’re the largest blades ever handled by the port, and this summer, even larger blades will arrive as companies expand production such as GE’s blade factory in France to meet demand — the largest North America has ever seen.

Alex Strogen described the scene as crews used two tandem cranes to unload 27 giant white blades from the MV Star Kilimanjaro, which picked up the wind turbine assemblies in China. They were manufactured by Goldwind Co.

“When you see these things come off and put onto these trailers, it’s exceptional in the sheer length of them,” Strogen said. “It looks as long as an airplane.”

In fact, each blade is about as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

Groups of longshoremen attached the cranes to each blade and hoisted it into the air and onto a waiting truck. Metal cage-like devices on both ends kept the blades from touching the ground. Once loaded onto the trucks, the blades and shaft parts head to a terminal to be unloaded by another group of workers.

Another fleet of trucks will drive the wind turbines, towers and blades to Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, Canada, over the course of 21 weeks. Potentia Renewables of Toronto is erecting the turbines on 34,000 acres of leased agriculture land, amid wind farm expansion in PEI elsewhere in the country, according to a news release from the Port of Vancouver.

Potentia’s project, called the Golden South Wind Project, will generate approximately 900,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. It also has greatly reduced CO2 emissions compared with a coal-fired plant, and complements tidal power in Nova Scotia in Canada’s clean energy mix, according to the news release.

The project is expected to be operating in 2021, similar to major UK offshore wind additions coming online.

The Port of Vancouver will receive 50 full turbines of two models for the project, as Manitoba invests in new turbines across Canada. In August, the larger of the models, with blades measuring 250 feet, will arrive. They’ll be the longest blades ever imported into any port in North America.

“It’s an exciting year for the port,” said Ryan Hart, chief external affairs officer.

The Port of Vancouver is following all the recommended safety precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic, including social distancing and face masks, Strogen said, with support from initiatives like Bruce Power’s PPE donation across Canada.
As for crews onboard the ships, the U.S. Coast Guard is the agency in charge, and it is monitoring the last port-of-call for all vessels seeking to enter the Columbia River, Hart wrote in an email.

Vessel masters on each ship are responsible for monitoring the health of the crew and are required to report sick or ill crew members to the USCG prior to arrival or face fines and potential arrest.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Power Generation News

California Battery Storage is transforming grid reliability as distributed energy, solar-plus-storage, and demand response mitigate rolling blackouts, replace peaker plants, and supply flexible capacity during heat waves and evening peaks across utilities and homes.

Key Points

California Battery Storage uses distributed and utility batteries to stabilize power, shift solar, and curb blackouts.

✅ Supplies flexible capacity during peak demand and heat waves

✅ Enables demand response and replaces gas peaker plants

✅ Aggregated assets form virtual power plants for grid support

Last month as a heat wave slammed California, state regulators sent an email to a group of energy executives pleading for help to keep the lights on statewide. “Please consider this an urgent inquiry on behalf of the state,” the message said.

The manager of the state’s grid was struggling to increase the supply of electricity because power plants had unexpectedly shut down and demand was surging. The imbalance was forcing officials to order rolling blackouts across the state for the first time in nearly two decades.

What was unusual about the emails was whom they were sent to: people who managed thousands of batteries installed at utilities, businesses, government facilities and even homes. California officials were seeking the energy stored in those machines to help bail out a poorly managed grid and reduce the need for blackouts.

Many energy experts have predicted that batteries could turn homes and businesses into mini-power plants that are able to play a critical role in the electricity system. They could soak up excess power from solar panels and wind turbines and provide electricity in the evenings when the sun went down or after wildfires and hurricanes, which have grown more devastating because of climate change in recent years. Over the next decade, the argument went, large rows of batteries owned by utilities could start replacing power plants fueled by natural gas.

But that day appears to be closer than earlier thought, at least in California, which leads the country in energy storage. During the state’s recent electricity crisis, more than 30,000 batteries supplied as much power as a midsize natural gas plant. And experts say the machines, which range in size from large wall-mounted televisions to shipping containers, will become even more important because utilities, businesses and homeowners are investing billions of dollars in such devices.

“People are starting to realize energy storage isn’t just a project or two here or there, it’s a whole new approach to managing power,” said John Zahurancik, chief operating officer at Fluence, which makes large energy storage systems bought by utilities and large businesses. That’s a big difference from a few years ago, he said, when electricity storage was seen as a holy grail — “perfect, but unattainable.”

On Friday, Aug. 14, the first day California ordered rolling blackouts, Stem, an energy company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, delivered 50 megawatts — enough to power 20,000 homes — from batteries it had installed at businesses, local governments and other customers. Some of those devices were at the Orange County Sanitation District, which installed the batteries to reduce emissions by making it less reliant on natural gas when energy use peaks.

John Carrington, Stem’s chief executive, said his company would have provided even more electricity to the grid had it not been for state regulations that, among other things, prevent businesses from selling power from their batteries directly to other companies.

“We could have done two or three times more,” he said.

The California Independent System Operator, which manages about 80 percent of the state’s grid, has blamed the rolling blackouts on a confluence of unfortunate events, including extreme weather impacts on the grid that limited supply: A gas plant abruptly went offline, a lack of wind stilled thousands of turbines, and power plants in other states couldn’t export enough electricity. (On Thursday, the grid manager urged Californians to reduce electricity use over Labor Day weekend because temperatures are expected to be 10 to 20 degrees above normal.)

But in recent weeks it has become clear that California’s grid managers also made mistakes last month, highlighting the challenge of fixing California’s electric grid in real time, that were reminiscent of an energy crisis in 2000 and 2001 when millions of homes went dark and wholesale electricity prices soared.

Grid managers did not contact Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office until moments before it ordered a blackout on Aug. 14. Had it acted sooner, the governor could have called on homeowners and businesses to reduce electricity use, something he did two days later. He could have also called on the State Department of Water Resources to provide electricity from its hydroelectric plants.

Weather forecasters had warned about the heat wave for days. The agency could have developed a plan to harness the electricity in numerous batteries across the state that largely sat idle while grid managers and large utilities such as Pacific Gas & Electric scrounged around for more electricity.

That search culminated in frantic last-minute pleas from the California Public Utilities Commission to the California Solar and Storage Association. The commission asked the group to get its members to discharge batteries they managed for customers like the sanitation department into the grid. (Businesses and homeowners typically buy batteries with solar panels from companies like Stem and Sunrun, which manage the systems for their customers.)

“They were texting and emailing and calling us: ‘We need all of your battery customers giving us power,’” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the solar and storage association. “It was in a very last-minute, herky-jerky way.”

At the time of blackouts on Aug. 14, battery power to the electric grid climbed to a peak of about 147 megawatts, illustrating how virtual power plants can rapidly scale, according to data from California I.S.O. After officials asked for more power the next day, that supply shot up to as much as 310 megawatts.

Had grid managers and regulators done a better job coordinating with battery managers, the devices could have supplied as much as 530 megawatts, Ms. Del Chiaro said. That supply would have exceeded the amount of electricity the grid lost when the natural gas plant, which grid managers have refused to identify, went offline.

Officials at California I.S.O. and the public utilities commission said they were working to determine the “root causes” of the crisis after the governor requested an investigation.

Grid managers and state officials have previously endorsed the use of batteries, using AI to adapt as they integrate them at scale. The utilities commission last week approved a proposal by Southern California Edison, which serves five million customers, to add 770 megawatts of energy storage in the second half of 2021, more than doubling its battery capacity.

And Mr. Zahurancik’s company, Fluence, is building a 400 megawatt-hour battery system at the site of an older natural gas power plant at the Alamitos Energy Center in Long Beach. Regulators this week also approved a plan to extend the life of the power plant, which was scheduled to close at the end of the year, to support the grid.

But regulations have been slow to catch up with the rapidly developing battery technology.

Regulators and utilities have not answered many of the legal and logistical questions that have limited how batteries owned by homeowners and businesses are used. How should battery owners be compensated for the electricity they provide to the grid? Can grid managers or utilities force batteries to discharge even if homeowners or businesses want to keep them charged up for their own use during blackouts?

During the recent blackouts, Ms. Del Chiaro said, commercial and industrial battery owners like Stem’s customers were compensated at the rates similar to those that are paid to businesses to not use power during periods of high electricity demand. But residential customers were not paid and acted “altruistically,” she said.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Grid Technologies News

UK Energy Price Cap aims to protect consumers on gas and electricity bills, tackling Big Six overcharging on default and standard variable tariffs, with Ofgem and MPs pushing urgent reforms to the broken market.

Key Points

A temporary absolute limit on default energy tariffs to shield consumers from overcharging on gas and electricity bills.

✅ Caps standard variable and default tariffs to protect loyalty.

✅ Targets Big Six pricing; oversight by Ofgem and BEIS MPs.

✅ Aims for winter protection while maintaining competition.

MPs are calling for a cap on the price of gas and electricity, with questions over the expected cost of a UK price cap amid fears consumers are being ripped off.

The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee says the Big Six energy companies have been overcharging for years.

MPs on the committee backed plans for a temporary absolute cap, noting debates over EU gas price cap strategies to fix what they called a "broken" energy market.

Labour's Rachel Reeves, who chairs the committee, said: "The energy market is broken. Energy is an essential good and yet millions of customers are ripped off for staying loyal to their energy provider.

"An energy price cap is now necessary and the Government must act urgently to ensure it is in place to protect customers next winter.

"The Big Six energy companies might whine and wail about the introduction of a price cap but they've been overcharging their customers on default and SVTs (standard variable tariffs) for years and their recent feeble efforts to move consumers off these tariffs has only served to highlight the need for this intervention."

The Committee also criticised Ofgem for failing to protect customers, especially the most vulnerable.

Draft legislation for an absolute cap on energy tariffs was published by the Government last year, and later developments like the Energy Security Bill have kept reform on the agenda.

But Business Secretary Greg Clark refused to guarantee that the flagship plans would be in place by next winter, despite warnings about high winter energy costs for households.

Committee members said there was a "clear lack of will" on the part of the Big Six to do what was necessary, including exploring decoupling gas and electricity prices, to deal with pricing problems.

A report from the committee found that customers are paying £1.4bn a year more than they should be under the current system.

Around 12 million households are stuck on poor-value tariffs, according to the report.

National assistance charity Citizens Advice said "loyal and vulnerable" customers had been "ripped off" for too long.

Chief executive Gillian Guy said: "An absolute cap, as recommended by the committee, is crucial to securing protection for the largest number of customers while continuing to provide competition in the market. This should apply to all default tariffs."

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

US Summer Grid Blackout Risk: NERC and FERC warn of strained reliability as drought, heat waves, and transmission constraints hit MISO, hydro, and renewables, elevating blackout exposure and highlighting demand response and storage solutions.

Key Points

A forecast of summer power shortfalls across the US grid, driven by heat, drought, transmission limits, and a changing resource mix.

✅ NERC and FERC warn of elevated blackout risk and reliability gaps.

✅ MISO region strained by drought, heat, and limited hydro.

✅ Mitigations: demand response, storage, and stronger transmission.

Just when it didn’t seem things couldn’t get worse — gasoline at $5 to $8 a gallon, supply shortages in everything from baby formula to new cars — comes the devastating news that many of us will endure electricity blackouts this summer, and that the U.S. has more blackouts than other developed nations according to one study.

The alarm was sounded by the nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, following a recent power grid report card highlighting vulnerabilities.

The North American electric grid is the largest machine on earth and the most complex, incorporating everything from the wonky pole you see at the roadside with a bird’s nest of wires to some of the most sophisticated engineering ever devised. It runs in real-time, even more so than the air traffic control system: All the airplanes in the sky don’t have to land at the same time, but electricity must be there at the flick of every switch.

Except it may not always be there this summer. Rod Kuckro, a respected energy journalist, says it depends on Mother Nature, with extreme weather impacts increasingly straining the grid, but the prognosis isn’t good.

Speaking on “White House Chronicle,” the weekly news and public affairs program on PBS that I host and produce, Kuckro said: “There is a confluence of factors that could affect energy supply across the majority of the (lower) 48 states. These are continued reduced hydroelectric production in the West, and the continued drought in the Southwest.”

The biggest threat to power supply, according to the NERC and the FERC, is in the vast central region, reaching from Manitoba in Canada, where grids are increasingly exposed to harsh weather in recent years, down to the Gulf of Mexico. It is served by the regional transmission organization, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator.

These operational entities are nonprofit companies that organize and distribute their regions’ bulk power for utilities. In California, it is the California Independent System Operator, working to keep the lights on as the state enters a new energy era; in the Mid-Atlantic, it is PJM; and in the Northeast, it is the New England System Independent Operator. They generate no power, but they control power flows and could initiate brownouts and blackouts.

With record storm activity and high temperatures predicted this summer, blackouts are likely to be deadly. The old, the young and the sick are all vulnerable. If the electric supply fails, with it goes everything from air conditioning to refrigeration to lights and even the ability to pump gas or access money from ATMs.

The United States, along with other modern nations, runs on electricity and when that falls short, it is catastrophic. It is chaos writ large, especially if the failure lasts more than a few hours.

On the same episode of “White House Chronicle,” Daniel Brooks, vice president of integrated grid and energy systems at the Electric Power Research Institute, also referred to a “confluence of factors” contributing to the impending electricity crisis. Brooks said, “We’re going through a significant change in terms of the energy mix and resources, and the way those resources behave under certain weather conditions.”

If power supply is stressed this summer, change in the generating mix will get a lot of political attention. At heart is the switch from fossil fuel generation to renewables. If there are power outages, a political storm will ensue. The Biden administration will be accused of speeding the switch to renewables, although the utilities don’t say that.

The weather is deteriorating, and, as experts note, the grid’s biggest challenge isn’t demand but climate change pressures that compound risks, and the grid is stretched in dealing with new realities as well as coping with old bugaboos, like the extreme difficulty in building transmission lines. Better transmission would relieve a lot of grid stress.

Peter Londa, president of Tantalus Systems, which helps its 260 utility customers digitize and cope with the new realities, explained some of the difficulties facing the utilities not only in the shifting sources of generation but also in the new shape of the electric demand. For example, he said, electric vehicles, particularly the much-awaited Ford F-150 Lightning pickup, could be an asset to homeowners and utilities, as California increasingly turns to batteries to stabilize its grid. During a blackout, their EVs could be used to power their homes for days. They could be a source of storage if thousands of owners signed up with their utilities in a storage program.

The fact is that utilities are facing three major shifts: in the generation to wind and solar, in customer demand, and especially in weather. Mother Nature is on a rampage and we all must adjust to that.
 

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Grid Technologies News

Lebanon Electricity Sector Reform aims to overhaul tariffs, modernize the grid, cut fuel oil subsidies, unlock donor loans, and deliver 24-hour power, restructuring EDL governance, boosting generation capacity, and reducing the budget deficit.

Key Points

A plan to restructure EDL, adjust tariffs, add capacity, and cut subsidies to deliver 24-hour power and reduce deficits.

✅ New tariffs and phased cost recovery

✅ Added generation capacity and grid modernization

✅ Governance reform of EDL and loss reduction

Lebanon’s Cabinet has approved a much-anticipated plan to restructure the country’s dysfunctional electricity sector, as Beirut power challenges continue to underscore chronic gaps, which hasn’t been developed since the time of the country’s civil war, decades ago.

The Lebanese depend on a network of private generator providers and decrepit power plants that rely on expensive fuel oil, while Israeli power supply competition seeks to lower consumer prices in a nearby market. Subsidies to the state electricity company cost nearly $2 billion a year.

For years, reform of the electricity sector, echoed by EU electricity market revamp, has been a major demand of Lebanon’s population of over 5 million. But frequent political stalemates, corruption and infighting among politicians, entrenched since the civil war that began in 1975, often derailed reforms.

International donors have called for reforms, including in the electricity sector, to unlock $11 billion in soft loans and grants pledged last year, as regional initiatives like the Jordan-Saudi electricity linkage move ahead to strengthen interconnections. Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Monday that the new plan will eventually provide 24-hour electricity.

Energy Minister Nada Boustani said that if there were no obstacles, residents could start feeling the difference next year, as an electricity market overhaul advances alongside the plan.

The plan, which is expected to get parliament approval, will reform the state electricity company, introduce new pricing policies, with international examples like France's electricity pricing scheme, and boost power production.

“This plan will also reduce the budget deficit,” Hariri told reporters. “This is positive and all international ratings companies will see … that Lebanon is taking real steps to reform in this sector.”

Lebanon’s soaring debt prompted rating agencies to downgrade the country’s credit ratings in January over concerns the government may not be able to pay its debts. Unemployment is believed to be at 36 per cent and more than 1 million Syrian refugees have overwhelmed the already aging infrastructure, while policy debates like Alberta electricity market changes illustrate different approaches to balancing cost and reliability.

Boustani told the Al-Manar TV that the electricity sector should be spared political bickering and populist approaches.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Energy Policy News

European Green Deal Electrification accelerates decarbonization via renewables, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and clean industry, backed by sustainable finance, EIB green lending, just transition funds, and energy taxation reform to phase out fossil fuels.

Key Points

An EU plan to replace fossil fuels with renewable electricity in transport, buildings, and industry, supported by green finance.

✅ Doubles electricity's share to cut CO2 and phase out fossil fuels.

✅ Drives EVs, heat pumps, and electrified industry via renewables.

✅ Funded by EIB lending, EU budget, and just transition support.

The European Union is preparing an ambitious plan to completely decarbonize by 2050. Increasing the share of electricity in Europe’s energy system – electricity that will increasingly come from renewable sources - will be at the center of this strategy, aligning with the broader global energy transition under way, the new head of the European Commission’s energy department said yesterday.

This will mean more electric cars, electric heating and electric industry. The idea is that fossil fuels should no longer be a primary energy source, heating homes, warming food or powering cars. In the medium term they should only be used to generate electricity, a shift mirrored by New Zealand's electricity shift efforts, which then powers these things, resulting in less CO2 emissions.

“First assessments show we need to double the share of electricity in energy consumption by 2050,” Ditte Juul-Jørgensen said at an event in Brussels this week, a goal echoed by recent calls to double investment in power systems from world leaders. “We’ve already seen an increase in the last decade, but we need to go further”.

Juul-Jørgensen, who started in her job as director-general of the commission’s energy department in August, has come to the role at a pivotal time for energy. The 2050 decarbonization proposal from the Commission, the EU’s executive branch, is expected to be approved next month by EU national leaders. A veto from Poland that has blocked adoption until now is likely to be overcome if Poland and other Eastern European countries are offered financial assistance from a “just transition fund”, according to EU sources.

Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming President of the Commission, has promised to unveil a “European Green Deal” in her first 100 days in office designed to get the EU to its 2050 goal. Juul-Jørgensen will be working with the incoming EU Energy Commissioner, Kadri Simson, on designing this complex strategy. The overall aim will be to phase out fossil fuels, and increase the use of electricity from green sources, amid trends like oil majors pivoting to electric across Europe today.

“This will be about how do we best make use of electricity to feed into other sectors,” Juul-Jørgensen said. “We need to think about transforming it into other sources, and how to best transport it.”

“But the biggest challenge from what I see today is that of investment and finance - the changes we have to make are very significant.”

Financing problems

The Commission is going to try to tackle the challenges of financing the energy transition with two tools: dedicated climate funding in the EU budget, and dedicated climate lending from the European Investment Bank.

“The EIB will play an increasing role in future. We hope to see agreement [with the EIB board] on that in the coming months so there’s a clear operator in the EIB to support the green transition. We’re looking at something around €400 billion a year.”

The Commission’s proposed dedicated climate spending in the next seven-year budget must still be approved by the 28 EU national governments. Juul-Jørgensen said there is unanimous agreement on the amount: 25% of the budget. But there is disagreement about how to determine what is green spending.

“A lot of work has been ongoing to ensure that when it comes to counting it reflects the reality of the investments,” she said. “We’re working on the taxonomy on sustainable finance - internally identifying sectors contributing to overall climate objectives.”

Electricity pact

Juul-Jørgensen was speaking at an event organized by the the Electrification Alliance, a pact between nine industry organizations to lobby for electricity to be put at the heart of the European green deal. They signed a declaration at the event calling for a variety of measures to be included in the green deal, reflecting debates over a fully renewable grid by 2030 in other jurisdictions, including a change to the EU’s energy taxation regime which incentivizes a switch from fossil fuel to electricity consumption.

“Electrification is the most important solution to turn the vision of a fossil-free Europe into reality,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, one of the signatories, and co-architect of the Paris Agreement.

“We are determined to deliver, but we must be mindful of the different starting points and secure sufficient financing to ensure a fair transition”, said Magnus Hall, President of electricity industry association Eurelectric, another signatory.

The energy taxation issue has been particularly tricky for the EU, since any change in taxation rules requires the unanimous consent of all 28 EU countries. But experts say that current taxation structures are subsidizing fossil fuels and punishing electricity, as recent UK net zero policy changes illustrate, and unless this is changed the European Green Deal can have little effect.

“Yes this issue will be addressed in the incoming commission once it takes up its function,” Juul-Jørgensen said in response to an audience question. “We all know the challenge - the unanimity requirement in the Council - and so I hope that member states will agree to the direction of work and the need to address energy taxation systems to make sure they’re consistent with the targets we’ve set ourselves.”

But some are concerned that the transformation envisioned by the green deal will have negative impacts on some of the most vulnerable members of society, including those who work in the fossil fuel sector.

This week the Centre on Regulation in Europe sent an open letter to Frans Timmermans, the Commission Vice President in charge of climate, warning that they need to be mindful of distributional effects. These worries have been heightened by the yellow vest protests in France, which were sparked by French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to increase fuel taxes for non-electric cars.

“The effectiveness of climate action and sustainability policies will be challenged by increasing social and political pressures,” wrote Máximo Miccinilli, the center’s director for energy. “If not properly addressed, those will enhance further populist movements that undermine trust in governance and in the public institutions.”

Miccinilli suggests that more research be done into identifying, quantifying and addressing distributional effects before new policies are put in place to phase out fossil fuels. He proposes launching a new European Observatory for Distributional Effects of the Energy Transition to deal with this.

EU national leaders are expected to vote on the 2050 decarbonization target, building on member-state plans such as Spain's 100% renewable electricity goal by mid-century, at a summit in Brussels on December 12, and Von der Leyen will likely unveil her European Green Deal in March.

Related News

• Electricity Forum News

• Climate Change News