Montana PSC head vows to kill power line project
Brad Molnar, a Republican from Laurel, says Montana customers will wind up buying power on the open market from states where it's more expensive to produce, such as California.
NorthWestern officials have said the $1 billion, 430-mile power line, which is still a half decade away from completion, at the earliest, is intended to ship power from new, renewable-energy projects, including wind farms.
This is just the latest setback for NorthWestern, which federal regulators have already slowed on concerns over how the company structured the deal and after a utility, PPL Montana, complained the project aims to gain a monopoly influence over transmission in the state.
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TOKYO - Power supplier eRex will build its largest biomass power plant to date in Japan, hoping the facility's scale will provide healthy margins and a means of skipping the government's feed-in tariff program.
The Tokyo-based electric company is in the process of selecting a location, most likely in eastern Japan. It aims to open the plant around 2024 or 2025 following a feasibility study. The facility will cost an estimated 90 billion yen ($812 million) or so, and have an output of 300 megawatts -- enough to supply about 700,000 households. ERex may work with a regional utility or other…
