Ironwood State Prison (Ironwood) and SunEdison announced the activation of a new 1.18 megawatt (MW) ground-mounted photovoltaic solar power system.
The photovoltaic system, which will deliver 2.4 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean renewable energy in the first year of operation, was deployed through an innovative public-private partnership between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and SunEdison, North AmericaÂ’s largest solar energy services provider.
Under a solar power services agreement (SPSA), SunEdison financed, constructed and will operate the solar energy system. The CDCR avoids all upfront capital costs and will purchase the solar energy at predictable prices equal to or less than current retail rates. The solar system will produce no greenhouse gases, no noise and will use little to no water in operation.
Activation of the zero-emission solar energy system is a major step for Ironwood in meeting the CDCRÂ’s energy management goals as well as Governor SchwarzeneggerÂ’s Executive Order S-20-04. The order mandates that State agencies evaluate the merits of using clean and renewable on-site energy generation technologies in all new building or large renovation projects, and take measures to reduce grid-based energy purchases for state-owned buildings by 20 percent by 2015, through cost-effective efficiency measures and distributed generation technologies.
Over twenty years of operation, the Ironwood system will produce more than 43 million kWh of solar energy, the equivalent to powering 4,107 homes and removing 3,770 cars off the road for one year.
According to Ironwood Warden Debra Dexter, “We are strongly committed to being a good neighbor and in doing what’s right for our community. Leveraging our most plentiful natural resource – the desert sun – while protecting a limited local resource – water – makes both environmental and fiscal sense for Ironwood and California taxpayers. This partnership with SunEdison makes it possible for Ironwood Prison to be the community’s host for solar energy.”
Harry Franey, Chief of Energy Management and Sustainability Section for CDCR, described the project, “This system at Ironwood has more than 6,200 PV panels that utilize the sun, our greatest natural resource. Plus, they require little to no water to operate, which makes PV a perfect solar technology for this region. In the first year, the system will produce more than 2.4 million kilowatt hours of clean renewable solar energy. That has an immediate beneficial impact upon our environment.”
CDCR’s Deborah Hysen, Chief Deputy Secretary, Facilities, Planning and Construction, said, “The power of this innovative public-private partnership allows us to meet the environmental goals of both the CDCR and of the State of California. We’re helping to clean the air, and simultaneously relieve some of the ever increasing pressure on the electric utility grid.”
“SunEdison is extremely proud to be part of this public-private partnership with the Ironwood State Prison and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to deploy clean renewable energy,” said Thomas (Tom) Rainwater, CEO of SunEdison. “This is truly a long-term partnership, where the solar power produced at Ironwood will support our partner’s commitment to being a good community member.”
Ironwood is the second PV system SunEdison is managing under an SPSA for CDCR. In June 2006, SunEdison activated a 1.16 MW solar power system at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison. The PV system at Chuckawalla has produced more than 3.7 million kWh since commercial activation. Over 20 years of production, the system will offset 31,627,817 lbs of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of removing 3,100 cars from the road. It will produce 35,981,589 kWh over 20 years, the equivalent of powering 3,377 homes for one year.
Ontario Electricity COVID-19 Recovery Rate sets a fixed price of 12.8 cents/kWh, replacing time-of-use billing and aligning costs across off-peak, mid-peak, and on-peak periods per Ontario Energy Board guidance through Oct. 31.
Key Points
A flat 12.8 cents/kWh electricity price in Ontario that temporarily replaces time-of-use rates from June 1 to Oct. 31.
✅ Fixed 12.8 cents/kWh, all hours, June 1 to Oct. 31
✅ Higher than off-peak 10.1, lower than mid/on-peak
✅ Based on Ontario Energy Board average cost
Ontario residents will now have to pay a fixed electricity price that is higher than the off-peak hydro rate many in the province have been allowed to pay so far due to the pandemic.
The announcement, which was made in a news release on Saturday, comes after the Ontario government suspended the normal “time-of-use” billing system on March 24 and as electricity rates are about to change across Ontario.
The government moved all customers onto the lowest winter rate in response to the pandemic as emergency measures meant more people would be at home during the middle of the day when electricity costs are the highest.
Now, the government has introduced a new “COVID-19 recovery rate” of 12.8 cents per kilowatt hour at all times of the day. The fixed price will be in place from June 1 to Oct. 31.
The fixed price is higher than the winter off-peak price, which stood at 10.1 per kilowatt hour. However, it is lower than the mid-peak rate of 14.4 per kilowatt hour and the high-peak rate of 20.8 per kilowatt hour, even though typical bills may rise as fixed pricing ends for many households.
“Since March 24, 2020, we have invested just over $175 million to deliver emergency rate relief to residential, farm and small business electricity consumers by suspending time-of-use electricity pricing,” Greg Rickford, the minister of energy, northern development and mines, said in a news release.
“This investment was made to protect the people of Ontario from a marked increase in electricity rates as they did their part by staying home to prevent the further spread of the virus.”
Rickford said that the COVID-19 recovery rate is based on the average cost of electricity set by the Ontario Energy Board.
“This fixed rate will continue to suspend time-of-use prices in a fiscally responsible manner,” he said. "Consumers will have greater flexibility to use electricity when they need it without paying on-peak and mid-peak prices, and some may benefit from ultra-low electricity rates under new time-of-use options."
Russian Utility Grid Cyberattacks reveal DHS findings on Dragonfly/Energetic Bear breaching control rooms and ICS/SCADA via vendor supply-chain spear-phishing, threatening blackouts and critical infrastructure across U.S. power utilities through stolen credentials and reconnaissance.
Key Points
State-backed ops breaching utilities via vendors to reach ICS/SCADA, risking grid disruption and control-room access.
✅ Spear-phishing and watering-hole attacks on vendor networks
✅ Stolen credentials used to reach isolated ICS/SCADA
✅ Potential to trigger localized blackouts and service disruptions
Hackers working for Russia were able to gain access to the control rooms of US electric utilities last year, allowing them to cause blackouts, federal officials tell the Wall Street Journal.
The hackers -- working for a state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear -- broke into utilities' isolated networks by hacking networks belonging to third-party vendors that had relationships with the power companies, the Department of Homeland Security said in a press briefing on Monday.
Officials said the campaign had claimed hundreds of victims and is likely continuing, the Journal reported.
"They got to the point where they could have thrown switches" to disrupt the flow power, Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial-control-system analysis for DHS, told the Journal.
"While hundreds of energy and non-energy companies were targeted, the incident where they gained access to the industrial control system was a very small generation asset that would not have had any impact on the larger grid if taken offline," the DHS said in a statement Tuesday. "Over the course of the past year as we continued to investigate the activity, we learned additional information which would be helpful to industry in defending against this threat."
Organizations running the nation's energy, nuclear and other critical infrastructure have become frequent targets for cyberattacks in recent years due to their ability to cause immediate chaos, whether it's starting a blackout or blocking traffic signals. These systems are often vulnerable because of antiquated software and the high costs of upgrading infrastructure.
The report comes amid heightened tension between Russia and the US over cybersecurity, alongside US condemnation of power grid hacking in recent months. Earlier this month, US special counsel Robert Mueller filed charges against 12 Russian hackers tied to cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee.
Hackers compromised US power utility companies' corporate networks with conventional approaches, such as spear-phishing emails and watering-hole attacks as seen in breaches at power plants across the US that target a specific group of users by infecting websites they're known to visit, the newspaper reported. After gaining access to vendor networks, hackers turned their attention to stealing credentials for access to the utility networks and familiarizing themselves with facility operations, officials said, according to the Journal.
Homeland Security didn't identify the victims, the newspaper reports, adding that some companies may not know they had been compromised because the attacks used legitimate credentials to gain access to the networks.
Cyberattacks on electrical systems aren't an academic matter. In 2016, Ukraine's grid was disrupted by cyberattacks attributed to Russia, which is engaged in territorial disputes with the country over eastern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula. Russia has denied any involvement in targeting critical infrastructure.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May designed to bolster the United States' cybersecurity by protecting federal networks, critical infrastructure and the public online. One section of the order focuses on protecting the grid like electricity and water, as well as financial, health care and telecommunications systems.
The Department of Homeland Security didn't respond to a request for comment.
US SF6 Emissions Decline as NOAA analysis and EPA mitigation show progress, with atmospheric measurements and Greenhouse Gas Reporting verifying reductions from the electric power grid; sulfur hexafluoride's extreme global warming potential underscores inventory improvements.
Key Points
A documented drop in US sulfur hexafluoride emissions, confirmed by NOAA atmospheric data and EPA reporting reforms.
✅ NOAA towers and aircraft show 2007-2018 decline
✅ EPA reporting and utility mitigation narrowed inventory gaps
✅ Winter leaks and servicing signal further reduction options
A new NOAA analysis shows U.S. emissions of the super-potent greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) have declined between 2007-2018, likely due to successful mitigation efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the electric power industry, with attention to SF6 in the power industry across global markets.
At the same time, significant disparities that existed previously between NOAA’s estimates, which are based on atmospheric measurements, and EPA’s estimates, which are based on a combination of reported emissions and industrial activity, have narrowed following the establishment of the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The findings, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, also suggest how additional emissions reductions might be achieved.
SF6 is most commonly used as an electrical insulator in high-voltage equipment that transmits and distributes electricity, and its emissions have been increasing worldwide as electric power systems expand, even as regions hit milestones like California clean energy surpluses in recent years. Smaller amounts of SF6 are used in semiconductor manufacturing and in magnesium production.
SF6 traps 25,000 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time scale for equal amounts of emissions, and while CO2 emissions flatlined in 2019 globally, that comparison underscores the potency of SF6. That means a relatively small amount of the gas can have a significant impact on climate warming. Because of its extremely large global warming potential and long atmospheric lifetime, SF6 emissions will influence Earth’s climate for thousands of years.
In this study, researchers from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive demand for better data, working with colleagues at EPA, CIRES, and the University of Maryland, estimated U.S. SF6 emissions for the first time from atmospheric measurements collected at a network of tall towers and aircraft in NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. The researchers provided an estimate of SF6 emissions independent from the EPA’s estimate, which is based on reported SF6 emissions for some industrial facilities and on estimated SF6 emissions for others.
“We observed differences between our atmospheric estimates and the EPA’s activity-based estimates,” said study lead author Lei Hu, a Global Monitoring Laboratory researcher who was a CIRES scientist at the time of the study. “But by closely collaborating with the EPA, we were able to identify processes potentially responsible for a significant portion of this difference, highlighting ways to improve emission inventories and suggesting additional emission mitigation opportunities, such as forthcoming EPA carbon capture rules for power plants, in the future.”
In the 1990s, the EPA launched voluntary partnerships with the electric power, where power-sector carbon emissions are falling as generation shifts, magnesium, and semiconductor industries to reduce SF6 emissions after the United States recognized that its emissions were significant. In 2011, large SF6 -emitting facilities were required to begin tracking and reporting their emissions under the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.
Hu and her colleagues documented a decline of about 60 percent in U.S. SF6 emissions between 2007-2018, amid global declines in coal-fired power in some years—equivalent to a reduction of between 6 and 20 million metric tons of CO2 emissions during that time period—likely due in part to the voluntary emission reduction partnerships and the EPA reporting requirement. A more modest declining trend has also been reported in the EPA’s national inventories submitted annually under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Examining the differences between the NOAA and EPA independent estimates, the researchers found that the EPA’s past inventory analyses likely underestimated SF6 emissions from electrical power transmission and distribution facilities, and from a single SF6 production plant in Illinois. According to Hu, the research collaboration has likely improved the accuracy of the EPA inventories. The 2023 draft of the EPA’s U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2021 used the results of this study to support revisions to its estimates of SF6 emissions from electrical transmission and distribution.
The collaboration may also lead to improvements in the atmosphere-based estimates, helping NOAA identify how to expand or rework its network to better capture emitting industries or areas with significant emissions, according to Steve Montzka, senior scientist at GML and one of the paper’s authors.
Hu and her colleagues also found a seasonal variation in SF6 emissions from the atmosphere-based analysis, with higher emissions in winter than in summer. Industry representatives identified increased servicing of electrical power equipment in the southern states and leakage from aging brittle sealing materials in the equipment in northern states during winter as likely explanations for the enhanced wintertime emissions—findings that suggest opportunities for further emissions reductions.
“This is a great example of the future of greenhouse gas emission tracking, where inventory compilers and atmospheric scientists work together to better understand emissions and shed light on ways to further reduce them,” said Montzka.
China Power Rationing disrupts the solar supply chain as coal shortages, price controls, and dual-control emissions policy curb electricity, squeezing polysilicon, aluminum, and module production and raising equipment costs amid surging post-Covid industrial demand.
Key Points
China's electricity curbs from coal shortages, price caps, and emissions targets disrupt solar output and materials.
✅ Polysilicon and aluminum output cut by power rationing
✅ Coal price spikes and power price caps squeeze generators
The solar manufacturing supply chain is among the industries being affected by a combination of soaring power demand, coal shortages, and carbon emission reduction measures which have seen widespread power cuts in China.
In Yunnan province, in southwest China, producers of the silicon metal which feeds polysilicon have been operating at 10% of the output they achieved in August. They are expected to continue to do so for the rest of the year as provincial authorities try to control electricity demand with a measure that is also affecting the phosphorus industry.
Fellow solar supply chain members from the aluminum industry in Guangxi province, in the south, have been forced to operate just two days per week, alongside peers in the concrete, steel, lime, and ceramics segments. Manufacturers in neighboring Guangdong have access to normal power supplies only on Fridays and Saturdays with electricity rationed to a 15% grid security load for the rest of the time.
pv magazine USA reported that a Tier 1 solar module manufacturer warned customers in an email that energy shortages in China have forced it to reduce or stop production at its Chinese manufacturing sites. The company warned the event will also affect output from its downstream cell and module production facilities in Southeast Asia.
The memo said that in order to recover from the effects of the “potential Force Majeure event,” it may delay or stop equipment delivery or seek to renegotiate contracts to pass through higher prices.
Raw material sourcing With reports of drastic power shortages emerging from China in recent days, the country has actually been experiencing problems since late June, and similar pressures have seen India ration coal supplies this year, but rationing is not unusual during the peak summer hours.
What has changed this time is that the outages have continued and prompted rationing measures across 19 of the nation’s provinces for the rest of the year. The problems have been caused by a combination of rising post-Covid electricity demand at a time when the politically-motivated ban on imports of Australian coal has tightened supply; and the manner in which Beijing controls power prices, with the situation further exacerbated by carbon emissions reduction policy.
Demand Electricity demand from industry, underscoring China’s electricity appetite, was 13.5 percentage points higher in the first eight months of the year than in the same period of 2020, at 3,585 TWh. That reflected a 13.8% year-on-year rise in total consumption, following earlier power demand drops when coronavirus shuttered plants, to 5.47 PWh, according to data from state energy industry trade body the China Electricity Council.
Figures produced by the China General Administration of Customs tell the same story: a rebound driven by the global recovery from the pandemic, as global power demand surges above pre-pandemic levels, with China recording import and export trade worth RMB2.48 trillion ($385 billion) in January-to-August. That was up 23.7% on the same period of last year and 22.8% higher than in the first eight months of 2019.
With Beijing having enforced an unofficial ban on imports of Australian coal for the last year or so – as the result of an ongoing diplomatic spat with Australia – rising demand for coal (which provided around 73% of Chinese electricity in the first half of the year) has further raised prices for the fossil fuel.
The problem for Chinese coal-fired power generators is that Beijing maintains strict controls on the price of electricity. As a result, input costs cannot be passed on to consumers. The mismatch between a liberalized coal market and centrally controlled end-user prices is illustrated by the current situation in Guangdong. There, a coal price of RMB1,560 per ton ($242) has pushed the cost of coal-fired electricity up to RMB0.472 per kilowatt-hour ($0.073). With coal power companies facing an electricity price ceiling of around RMB0.463/kWh ($0.071), generators are losing around RMB0.12 for every kilowatt-hour they generate. In that situation, rationing electricity supplies is an obvious remedy.
The crisis has been worsened by the introduction of China’s “dual control” energy policy, which aims to help meet President Xi Jinping’s climate change pledge of hitting peak carbon emissions this decade and a net zero economy by 2060, and to reduce coal power production over time. Dual control refers to attempts to wind down greenhouse gas emissions at both a national level and in more local areas, such as provinces and cities.
Red status With the finer details of the carbon reduction policy yet to be ironed out, government departments and provincial and city authorities have started to set their own emission-reduction targets. In mid-August, state planning body the China National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) published a table of the energy control situation across the nation. With nine provinces marked red for their energy consumption, and a further 10 highlighted as yellow, officials received another motivation to introduce power rationing.
China’s solar industry is being impacted by coal shortages for electric power generation. In this 2014 photo, a thermal generating plant’s cooling towers loom over a street in Henan Province. Image: flickr/V.T. Polywoda
The current approach of rolling blackouts seems unlikely to be a sustainable solution, as surging electricity demand strains power systems worldwide, given the damage it could inflict on industry and the resentment it would cause in parts of the nation already preparing for winter.
The choice facing China’s policymakers is whether to ramp up coal supplies to force prices down by using decommissioned domestic supplies and halting the ban on Australian imports, or to raise electricity prices to prompt generators to get the lights back on. While the drawbacks of raising household electricity bills seem obvious, the first approach of using more coal could endanger the nation’s climate change commitments on the even of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, in November. Sources close to the NDRC have suggested the electricity price may be set to rise soon.
GDP What is clear is the effect the energy crisis is having on the Chinese economy and on the solar supply chain. Leading up to a national day holiday in China, the coal price in northern China rose to around RMB2,000 per ton ($310), three times higher than at the beginning of the year.
Investment bank China International Capital Corp. blamed the dual control emission reduction policy for the electricity shortages. It predicted a 0.1-0.15 percentage point impact on economic growth in the last quarter of 2021. Morgan Stanley has put that figure at 1% in the current quarter, if industrial output restrictions continue. And Japan’s Nomura Securities revised down its annual forecast on Chinese growth from 8.2% to 7.7%. It now expects GDP gains in the third and fourth quarters to cool from 5.1% to 4.7%, and from 4.4% to 3%, respectively.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
BC Ferries Island Class hybrid ferries deliver quiet, battery-electric travel with shore power readiness, lower emissions, and larger capacity on northern routes, protecting marine wildlife while replacing older vessels on Powell River and Texada services.
Key Points
Hybrid-electric ferries using batteries and diesel for quiet, low-emission service, ready for shore power upgrades.
✅ Operate 20% electric at launch; future full-electric via shore power
✅ Quieter transits help protect West Coast whales and marine habitat
In a champagne celebration, BC Ferries welcomed two new, hybrid-electric ships into its fleet Wednesday. The ships arrived in Victoria last month, and are expected to be in service on northern routes by the summer.
The Island Aurora and Island Discovery have the ability to run on either diesel or electricity.
"The pressure on whales on the West Coast is very intense right now," said BC Ferries CEO Mark Collins. "Quiet operation is very important. These ships will be gliding out of the harbor quietly and electrically with no engines running, that will be really great for marine space."
BC Ferries says the ships will be running on electricity 20 per cent of the time when they enter service, but the company hopes they can run on electricity full-time in the future. That would require the installation of shoreline power, which the company hopes to have in place in the next five to 10 years. Each ship costs around $40-million, a price tag that the federal government partially subsidized through CIB support as part of the electrification push.
When the two ships begin running on the Powell River to Texada, and Port McNeill, Alert Bay, and Sointula routes, two older vessels will be retired.
On Kootenay Lake, an electric-ready ferry is slated to begin operations in 2023, reflecting the province's wider shift.
"They are replacing a 47-car ferry, but on some routes they will be replacing a 25-car ferry, so those routes will see a considerable increase in service," said Collins.
Although the ships will not be servicing Colwood, the municipality's mayor is hoping that one day, they will.
"We can look at an electric ferry when we look at a West Shore ferry that would move Colwood residents to Victoria," said Mayor Rob Martin, noting that across the province electric school buses are hitting the road as well. "Here is a great example of what BC Ferries can do for us."
BC Ferries says it will be adding four more hybrid ships to its fleet by 2022, and is working on adding hybrid ships that could run from Victoria to Tsawwassen, similar to Washington State Ferries' hybrid upgrade underway in the region.
B.C’s first hybrid-electric ferries arrived in Victoria on Saturday morning ushering in a new era of travel for BC Ferries passengers, as electric seaplane flights are also on the horizon for the region.
“It’s a really exciting day for us,” said Tessa Humphries, spokesperson for BC Ferries.
It took the ferries 60 days to arrive at the Breakwater District at Ogden Point. They came all the way from Constanta, Romania.
“These are battery-equipped ships that are designed for fully electric operation; they are outfitted with hybrid technology that bridges the gap until the EV charging infrastructure and funding is available in British Columbia,” said Humphries.
The two new "Island Class" vessels arrived at about 9 a.m. to a handful of people eagerly wanting to witness history.
Sometime in the next few days, the transport ship that brought the new ferries to B.C. will go out into the harbor and partially submerge to allow them to be offloaded, Humphries said.
The transfer process could happen in four to five days from now. After the final preparations are finished at the Breakwater District, the ships will be re-commissioned in Point Hope Maritime and then BC Ferries will officially take ownership.
“We know a lot of people are interested in this so we will put out advisory once we have more information as to a viewing area to see the whole process,” said Humphries.
Both Island Class ferries can carry 300 passengers and 47 vehicles. They won’t be sailing until later this year, but Humphries tells CTV News they will be named by the end of February.
Whether you would prefer Live Online or In-Person
instruction, our electrical training courses can be
tailored to meet your company's specific requirements
and delivered to your employees in one location or at
various locations.
