CEC Current Winner vs. Cyrus Family Over Transmission Line

CEC wins round in fight over transmission line
By Jim Cornelius – NuggetNews.com – September 22, 2009

Central Electric Cooperative (CEC) won a round in an ongoing battle with the Cyrus family of Sisters, and others, over the Jordan Road transmission line.

Deschutes County Hearings Officer Karen Green ruled last week that “CEC has a common-law vested right to complete, operate and maintain the entire Jordan Road line upgrade from the Cline Falls substation to the Black Butte substation.”

CEC had claimed that right under property rights Measure 49. The Cyrus family and Trail Crossing Trust contested the right. The Cyruses have long maintained that CEC did not have the right to install tall new steel towers for the Jordan Road line upgrade and they have a case pending in Deschutes County Circuit Court arguing that the poles trespass on their property.

Tollgate Substation Has Its Detractors

There are many challenges to fixing, upgrading, maintaining and expanding the grid. Trying to please homeowners whose homes are near new or enlarged substations are just one of the challenges.  It’s clear there are no simple answers.

The trade-offs are addressed in the very last paragraph of the article: “… once the system is completely converted to 115kv power, the system will be more reliable and more redundant, reducing or eliminating outages due to overload, and making outages due to weather or accidents less lengthy.”

# # #

Tollgate substation nearing completion
By Jim Cornelius – Nugget News – August 25, 2009
 
Almost all the construction is complete and landscape berms are newly planted. The Central Electric Cooperative’s Tollgate substation is set to go on line this fall.

CEC is waiting for one last piece of equipment that was delayed in coming from the manufacturer.

“We’re about a month-and-a-half, two months from completely energizing and basically saying we’re done,” said CEC spokesman Alan Guggenheim.

One major feature of the new substation is completed. The Deschutes County Hearings Officer required CEC to create six-foot tall landscaped berms to partially obscure the substation from the views of residents whose homes at the edge of the subdivision look out onto the massive new steel structure.

Sisters Landscaping Company last week planted the berms with native grasses, sage, Oregon grape and other indigenous species. Three weeks ago, CEC reached an agreement allowing the utility to irrigate the berms using Tollgate water.

“We’ll water according to the rules of the homeowners’ association,” Guggenheim said. “We’ll irrigate pretty intensively for the next couple of weeks. Nature takes over at a certain point and determines what is going to take root and what the deer are going to eat.”

Renewable Energy Shortcoming: It’s Intermittent

Seeking green power solutions for hazy days
Bend Bulletin – August 2, 2009

Portland General Electric got a lesson in one of the shortcomings of renewable energy last week.

With temperatures above 100 degrees in Portland, the company broke its all-time record for summer power consumption Monday, then again Tuesday, and also on Wednesday.

All the while, the company’s Bigelow Canyon Wind Farm 140 miles east of Portland was producing next to no power. The winds that usually suck cool air up the Columbia River and keep summers mild had ceased, baking Portland and idling the turbines at Bigelow Canyon — just when they were most needed.

If wind and solar are going to play a bigger part in meeting the country’s electrical demand, utilities will need to get faster at reacting every time the wind dies down or a cloud moves in front of the sun. Bend’s PV Powered is working on solving a part of the problem.

The federal government recently awarded the company $3 million to get to work building the machines needed to create a future network of thousands or even millions of small-scale solar generating systems.

The Solar Energy Grid Integration System is an initiative of the Department of Energy that seeks to make solar power cost-competitive with other forms of power generation by 2015. Right now, solar power makes up only a tiny fraction of the total energy consumed in the United States, but that could change quickly if current treends continue.

According to a 2007 Energy Department report, 5 to 10 percent of electricity customers could be using some form of solar power within 10 years if homeowners continue adding solar panels to their homes at the current rate.

Solar-Powered South Florida City – Why Not Central Oregon?

Coming soon to the Sunshine State: the sunshine city
By Michael Grunwald – Time Magazine – April 9, 2009

An NFL lineman turned visionary developer today is unveiling startlingly ambitious plans for a solar-powered city of tomorrow in southwest Florida’s outback, featuring the world’s largest photovoltaic solar plant, a truly smart power grid, recharging stations for electric vehicles and a variety of other green innovations. The community of Babcock Ranch is designed to break new frontiers in sustainable development, quite a shift for a state that has never been sustainable, and lately hasn’t had much development.

“Some people think I got hit in the head a few too many times,” quips developer Syd Kitson, who spent six years in the trenches for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys before entering the real estate business in the mid-1980s. “But I still believe deeply in Florida. And the time has come for something completely different.”

To anyone familiar with southern Florida’s planning-nightmare sprawl of golf courses, strip malls and cookie-cutter subdivisions named after the plants and animals they replaced, Kitson’s vision for his solar-powered, smart-growth, live-where-you-work city of 45,000 people east of Fort Myers is breathtakingly different. That’s why the press conference held today revealing his development plans for the historic Babcock Ranch property will feature representatives from the Audubon Society, the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club.

Pacific Power to Locate Substations at Juniper Ridge

Bend’s Juniper Ridge gets powerful new tenant
Councilors OK land sale to Pacific Power

KTVZ.com – December 22, 2008 

After meeting in executive session, Bend city councilors unanimously approved two land sales at Juniper Ridge, the city-owned mixed-use development at the north end of town, pending the city attorney’s final review.

First, it agreed to sell, for about $3.4 million, two parcels totaling about 14 acres for Pacific Power’s temporary and permanent substations to serve the mixed-use development, as well as new corporate offices. Then it agreed to sell, for about $2.4 million, eight acres to Suterra, an environmentally friendly pesticide maker, north of the just-completed Les Schwab Tires headquarters.

The city’s economic development manager, John Russell, is leaving his position, as Bend looks to hire a development manager for Juniper Ridge. The electric utility deal is crucial for other land sales and development to proceed, officials said.

Councilor Peter Gramlich, who lost his bid for re-election, told KBND radio the city has “needed a power plant to get electricity to Juniper Ridge, and an increasing amount of tenants wanting to locate at Juniper Ridge want to know where the power is coming from. It was an opportune time for PPL to approach the city on this. To the city’s way of thinking, this makes the parcel more attractive.”

Bend’s PV Powered Part of Solar Energy Integration System

Solar Energy Grid Integration System – SEGIS
Peachy Green – Stephanie – October 28, 2008

Have you heard about the solar energy grid integration system (SEGIS) program? If not, you’re in good company. You shouldn’t be in the dark when it comes to important solar energy initiatives, though.

The solar energy grid integration system program was established through the U.S. Department of Energy, and is part of its Solar America Initiative (SAI), which aims to make photovoltaic (PV) solar powered products cost-competitive with other sources of electricity by the year 2015. Specifically, the solar energy grid integration system is:

A $24 million effort to develop advanced inverters and balance-of-system components that aim to reduce the lifetime cost of solar electricity while enabling increased grid penetration and greater overall PV system reliability.

Sisters Area Transmission Lines Need Upgrade

As Central Oregon continues to grow – albeit at a slower rate than the boom years between 2002 and 2006 – the demand for electricity will also grow regardless of the efforts to promote conservation.  And the cost to continually upgrade the electric power grid will continue to grow as fast if not faster due to increase costs of material and labor as the demand for electricity. This growth must eventually lead to continued increases in the cost of electricity to end users.

# # #

Central Electric Cooperative To Convert 69,000 to 115,000 Volt Transmission To Sisters
KOHD TV News – September 3, 2008

Central Electric Cooperative announced plans to convert to 115,000 volt electric transmission into the Sisters area west of Redmond this September. The switch will require two separate, six-hour power outages for the safety of line crews and engineers doing the work, said CEC spokesman Alan Guggenheim.

“The upgrade from 69,000 volts to 115,000 volts will improve system reliability and provide for increased power demand by new and existing customers,” said Guggenheim.

Central Electric Co-op Files Measure 37 Claim

The electric power grid needs maintenance and upgrades but it is patently wrong for the Central Electric Cooperative to attempt to use Measure 37 to economically advantage CEC to the tune of $168 million on the backs of the very taxpayers the electric cooperative serves. Regardless of what Central Electric CEO Dave Markham thinks this is not at all “clever”.

Bend Bulletin: CEC power co-op files a $168M M37 claim
By Keith Chu – Bend Bulletin – July 17, 2007

Central Electric Cooperative is seeking a Measure 37 waiver on all of its Deschutes County power line easements, or else $168 million in compensation from the county.

And the company has already begun work on one part of the line, although it does not have county land use approval to move forward.

The company’s critics say the move could affect property values of the many pieces of privately held land the easements cross, and the power cooperative is trying to bypass the public process.

To support its claim that current rules hurt the value of the company’s easements, CEC argues that it would cost the company $2.6 million more per mile to dig underground lines, rather than building taller power towers, which aren’t explicitly allowed under its existing easements. The claim includes more than 64 miles of easements, for the $168 million total.