Wind Capital Group said it is selling its last two U.S. wind farms to a California company. Wind Capital said it will sell the 150-MW Lost Creek wind farm in Missouri and the 210-MW Post Rock facility in Kansas to San Francisco-based Pattern Energy Group. Wind Capital said the sales, for a reported $244 million, will allow it to focus on its wind developments in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

More: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Entergy Spending $62.2M on 24-mile Tx Line in Arkansas

Entergy Arkansas said it is spending $62.2 million to build a transmission line and a new substation to improve grid reliability in Drew and Desha counties. The company said it is part of a $2.4 billion investment through 2017 on system upgrades. It is already constructing another 27-mile transmission line that will end at the same new substation. That project is estimated at $25 million.

More: Magnolia Reporter

Duke Finds Hairline Crack on Reactor Head at Harris Plant

Duke Energy Progress discovered a hairline crack in the reactor pressure head of Shearon Harris nuclear generating station, but the company told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the crack poses no danger. The crack will be repaired during the current refueling outage, the company said. “The unit is in a safe and stable condition,” Duke told NRC. “The flaw and repair have no impact to the health or safety of the public.”

The crack, measuring about a quarter-inch, is near a nozzle that penetrates the reactor head. It is similar to a crack that was missed during a 2012 refueling inspection and caught later during a data review. After that incident, NRC ordered Duke to ensure such an incident didn’t happen again.

More: Charlotte Business Journal

NextEra Bets Big on Colorado Wind

NextEra Energy Resources is investing $640 million on two more wind farms in Colorado. The company already has invested about $2 billion on seven Colorado wind farms generating about 1,175 MW. The company said the two new wind farms should be ready to come online by the end of the year.

The first facility, a $240 million 150-MW wind project in Kit Carson County, has a 25-year contract to sell its output to Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. The second facility, the $400 million 250-MW Golden West Wind energy Project, will be in El Paso County and will sell its output to Xcel Energy.

NextEra is the largest wind farm operator in the U.S., with 10 GW of turbines.

More: Denver Business Journal

E.ON Starting Asset Management, Repair Businesses in US

E.ON, the world’s largest investor-owned utility, is branching out into the asset management and facility repair business in the United States. The company owns or operates nearly 3 GW of generation in North America, and now it’s starting up E.ON Energy Services. The new business will offer on-site repair and asset management operations for plants it does not own. “As we transitioned to an operations-focused company several years ago, we saw a large growing demand for qualified service providers,” E.ON’s North American chairman Patrick Woodson said. He pointed to the continent’s growing wind and solar industries as an area where the company could expand.

More: pv magazine

Advanced Power Gets Funding for $899M Combined-Cycle Plant

Advanced Power, based in Switzerland, has closed financing for an $899 million combined-cycle plant it will build in northeastern Ohio. The 700-MW natural gas-fired plant will sell energy, capacity and ancillary services into the PJM market. Advanced Power secured $411 million in funding from TIAA-CREF, Ullico and Prudential Capital Group, and a further $488 million from BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and eight other banks. The Carroll County Energy Project will be in Carrollton, Ohio, close to both the Utica and Marcellus shale gas fields, as well as American Electric Power’s 345-kV transmission line.

The company did not say when construction would begin.

More: Dayton Business Journal

Duke Appeals $25 Million Ash Fine, Calls it Excessive

Duke Energy is appealing a $25.1 million fine levied by North Carolina environmental officials in connection with groundwater pollution from ash piles at a retired power plant. Duke says the fine is excessive and that it has taken corrective action.

The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources fined the Charlotte, N.C.-based company in March for failing to control ground water leaching from the coal ash lagoons at the now-retired L.V. Sutton Steam Electric Plant near Wilmington, N.C.

The fine is separate from a $102 million settlement the company agreed to pay federal authorities for the damage caused by a massive leak of toxic coal ash from another retired plant, near the Dan River. That event last year caused pollution in two states — Virginia and North Carolina — after a broken pipe allowed coal ash slurry to flow into the river. The company still faces litigation from Virginia and private property owners as a result of that leak. North Carolina, in response, enacted coal-ash legislation and formed a formal oversight committee.

Duke’s appeal of the Sutton fine notes that the company had already taken corrective actions to stop and remediate the leakage from the retired plant. It also claims that state environmental officials erred in fining the company for 1,822 days of violations, despite only taking samples for 27 days, using a new way of calculating the fine, making it $24 million higher than fines for earlier, similar events, and failing to take into account the possibility of other sources of contamination.

More: News & Record

Compiled by Ted Caddell