Duke Energy announced Monday that it will be buying distributor Piedmont Natural Gas, following a trend of energy companies taking advantage of stable, low natural gas prices to invest in infrastructure.
Duke said it offered $60/share, a premium of about 42% compared to Piedmont’s closing price Friday. Piedmont shares had already climbed about 8.5% in premarket trading Monday. Duke said it would assume about $1.8 billion in Piedmont’s net debt.
Piedmont, based in Charlotte, N.C., serves more than 1 million residential and business customers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Piedmont and Duke are partners in the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a planned $5 billion, 550-mile pipeline to run from the Marcellus Shale Field through West Virginia, Virginia and into eastern North Carolina. Dominion Resources is also a major partner in that project.
More: Reuters
AEP’s Akins says 3 Years Won’t Cut it for PPA
American Electric Power CEO Nick Akins says a counter proposal to his company’s guaranteed profits plan simply won’t do the trick.
A staff expert with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio suggested a three-year power purchase agreement as an alternative to AEP’s request for long-term price guarantees to keep its aging generation fleet viable. During a conference call with analysts, Akins made it clear that the state-offered compromise wouldn’t be enough.
“I’ll just say this: The term has to be substantial,” Akins said. “Because we have to have a feeling that we can invest, with the large capital investments we make in generation, we need to make sure that we can do that and be secure from a future perspective,” he said. PUCO is in the middle of hearing requests from AEP and FirstEnergy for long-term power purchase agreements. Akins said he expects a decision by the end of the year.
More: Columbus Business First
Duke Settles Ohio Suit Alleging Improper Rebates for $81 Million
Facing a class-action lawsuit that it improperly gave rebates to some large electric customers, Duke Energy has agreed to pay an $81 million settlement to avoid “costs and uncertainties.” The settlement must still be approved by a U.S. district court in Columbus, Ohio, before it is finalized.
An attorney for the plaintiffs said Duke’s payments to 22 large commercial customers should have been extended to smaller customers. The suit alleges Duke paid the rebates to the large customers from 2005 through 2008, and that the payments violated antitrust and other laws.
More than a million residential and commercial customers were represented in the suit and will share the settlement.
More: Wall Street Journal
Xcel to Install LED Streetlights Throughout Territory
Xcel Energy has begun a massive, five-year, $100 million effort to replace city streetlights with LED lightbulbs in its eight-state service territory. The plan includes about 100,000 streetlights throughout Minnesota and 25,000 in Wisconsin.
The company estimates that modest-sized cities would save $3,000 to $5,000 per month. Xcel said that the cost of LED lamps has decreased sufficiently to justify the installation. LEDs not only produce brighter light than sodium-vapor bulbs, but they also consume 40 to 60% less electricity.
Xcel tested the large-scale roll-out in 2013, when it installed 500 LED streetlights in West St. Paul, Minn. The utility concluded that the LEDs ultimately offered better lighting at less cost.
More: Star Tribune; Hudson Star-Observer
Prairie Power Dedicates Solar Farms
The Illinois-based generation and transmission cooperative Prairie Power recently dedicated two 500-kW solar farms in the state: the Spoon River Solar Farm between Havana and Astoria and the Shelby Solar Farm, about 1 mile east of the Lake Shelbyville Dam.
Prairie Power supplies power to 10 electric distribution cooperatives. The facilities cost $1.6 million each.
More: The Telegraph
GM, DTE to Build Michigan’s Largest Solar Array
General Motors and DTE Energy plan to erect Michigan’s largest solar installation by the end of the year on 4.25 acres next to GM’s Warren Transmission plant.
The 2,800-panel array is expected to generate about 1 million kWh of energy per year that will be fed into the grid.
More: AutoBlog
Entergy’s Palisades Nuclear Plant Back Online After Refueling
Entergy brought its Palisades nuclear power plant back online last week after investing $63 million in fuel and $58 million in inspections and equipment upgrades. The Michigan plant shut down Sept. 16.
The company spent nearly $50 million on safety enhancements required after the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan.
More: MLive
PSEG to Spend $3.5 Billion On Generation Fleet
Public Service Enterprise Group says it will spend about $3.5 billion over five years to make its generation fleet cleaner and more competitive.
Most of the money will go toward building more natural gas-fired plants in Sewaren, N.J., and Keys, Md. It also plans to add capacity at its existing nuclear units and upgrade its gas-fired fleet, according to Shahid Malik, PSEG president of Energy Resources and Trade.
Malik said access to inexpensive and plentiful shale gas from the Marcellus region in Pennsylvania was a major reason for PSEG’s decreasing reliance on coal, which has dropped from 30% to 10% of its energy supply in recent years. “The markets don’t care if electricity comes from solar, gas or nuclear,” he said. “They buy based on price and since gas is the lowest-cost fuel, it is replacing coal, oil and even some smaller nuclear plants.”
More: Reuters
Revel Casino Power Plant Heading for Court-Ordered Sale
The power plant built to provide electricity to the now-closed Revel Casino in Atlantic City is headed for a court-ordered sale.
Bank of New York Mellon, trustee for holders of $118.6 million in bonds secured by the facility, last month filed suit to take the collateral from ACR Energy Partners, which owns and operates the plant. ACR is a subsidiary of Energenic, a joint venture between DCO Energy and Marina Energy.
Revel’s previous owners agreed to pay costly monthly financing fees to ACR. Glenn Straub’s Polo North County Club, which bought the casino out of foreclosure in April, has refused to honor the agreement.
More: Press of Atlantic City
AES Shutters Beaver Valley Plant Ahead of Schedule
AES, which had been considering converting its Beaver Valley coal-fired plant to burn natural gas, has scrapped those plans after it couldn’t find a buyer for the power. The Pennsylvania plant is now closed.
The Potter County plant was supplying electricity to West Penn Power and steam to two adjacent factories. But it lost its last electric customer two years ago. It bought its way out of the co-gen agreements, and despite a plan to generate cheaper electricity using natural gas, it couldn’t find any takers.
“It really came as a surprise to us when we saw the barriers go across the driveway,” said Rebecca Matsco, chairwoman of the Potter County Board of Supervisors.
More: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Apex Seeks FAA Approval For Texas Wind Farm
A Virginia company that wanted to build more than 170 wind turbines in Corpus Christi, Texas, is once again seeking clearance for a wind farm from the Federal Aviation Administration, though this one would be smaller and located outside the city limits.
Apex Clean Energy has filed “notices for proposed construction” with FAA for 86 wind turbines. Applications for another 58 wind turbines also are being reviewed. Each wind turbine would measure about 500 feet tall, according to the company’s application. Officials for the Corpus Christi International Airport have expressed concern about the potential risks to air traffic.
Earlier plans for a larger wind farm drew criticism from residents who were concerned about diminishing property values, safety and changes to the area’s aesthetics. Apex voluntarily withdrew its applications with the FAA after the city annexed its property last year. The new plan places all wind turbines outside the city boundary.
More: Corpus Christi Caller-Times
Financial Climate Making Nuclear Better Option
Low interest rates for large-scale capital investments are making nuclear generation a more attractive option for those looking to fight climate change, according to an analysis conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA determined that investors are looking for a return of between 3% and 7% and, considering that fossil generators will be forced to pay about $30/ton for carbon emissions, says that nuclear generation is less expensive than either coal- or natural gas-fired generation.
It’s a message that has apparently already hit home in China. That country recently unveiled plans to build as many as eight new nuclear stations per year through 2020.
More: Bloomberg News