NextEra Energy, parent company of Florida Power & Light, announced plans to buy Hawaiian Electric for $2.63 billion, taking over a utility that is losing significant load to renewable competition.
NextEra, already North America’s largest generator of wind and solar electricity, was interested in Hawaiian Electric because of the utility’s ambitious plans to wean itself from fossil fuels. Hawaiian Electric has said it plans to get 65% of its power from renewable sources by 2030.
“It makes a lot of sense for NextEra with all the renewables that Hawaiian Electric was going to do,” Tim Winter, an analyst at Gabelli & Co. in Rye, N.Y., told Bloomberg News. NextEra is “the premier renewable energy builder and developer and really good at transmission.”
More: Bloomberg
Wisconsin Public Service Corp. to Build 400-MW Plant near Kaukauna
Green Bay-based utility Wisconsin Public Service Corp. plans to build a 400-MW natural gas-fired plant at its Fox Energy Center.
In filings with the state Public Service Commission, WPSC said the new generation could offset contemplated retirements of coal-fired plants. The $500 million project would get underway in the spring of 2016 and be operational by 2019.
The Fox Energy Center in Kaukauna is home to two plants, generating 600 MW. WPSC is a subsidiary of Integrys, which is being acquired by WE Energies of Milwaukee in a $9.1 billion deal.
More: Green Bay Press-Gazette
Ameren’s Callaway Plant Offline After Reactor Trips Because of Unknown Issue
Ameren Missouri’s 1,200-MW Callaway nuclear generating plant shut down last week after an electrical problem caused its reactor to trip, forcing the utility to use other plants to make up for what amounts to about 20% of its electricity supply. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after a preliminary investigation, classified the incident as a nonemergency and said no radiation was released.
The reactor trip came not long after crews finished refueling the reactor and installing a new reactor vessel pressure head, but company officials said the outage was unrelated to those jobs. They did not say when the plant will be restarted.
More: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Ameren Welcomes its First Solar Facility in its 100-Year History
Ameren Missouri, which has been in business for more than a century, launched its first solar energy facility last week.
The 6-MW O’Fallon Renewable Energy Center is the first solar facility in Ameren’s mix, company officials said. A second plant is to be built in 2016.
“We are moving away more from carbon-based energy and this solar plant is one of the strategies Ameren Missouri is executing on,” said Scott Wibbenmeyer, the company’s manager of renewable development.
More: FierceEnergy
Xcel Denies it Owes Babcock & Wilcox $45M for Steam Generator Work
Xcel Energy, answering an allegation from Babcock & Wilcox Nuclear Energy that it owes the contractor $45 million for work done at the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant in Red Wing, Minn., said they both share responsibility for the project’s cost overruns and delays.
B&W “continued to lose ground against the schedule on a virtually daily basis,” Xcel said in court filings. In fact, Xcel said, the contractor owes it $3 million.
B&W said the increased costs of the job came about in part because Xcel changed the scope of the work. The work at the plant took more than a year.
More: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
PSE&G, Pilgrim Still Negotiating over Right-of-Way for Pipeline
Officials of Pilgrim Pipeline Holdings and Public Service Electric & Gas say they are still in negotiations over access to the utility’s land in New Jersey for use of a controversial pipeline, despite news reports that PSE&G had denied Pilgrim access.
The state chapter of the Sierra Club, which is opposed to Pilgrim’s plan for the pipeline, posted a news release on its website that said Pilgrim “was denied access to PSE&G right-of-way by the PSE&G Corporate Lands Division and now senior leadership has upheld that decision.” But Pilgrim official George Bochis said the companies are still talking. “It is early in the process and we continue to have discussions with PSE&G,” he said.
The 178-mile pipeline would transport crude oil from a rail terminal in Albany, N.Y., to a refinery in Linden, N.J. It would then carry refined products from Linden northward.
More: NJ.com
Dominion’s Millstone Nuclear Plant to Stay Non-Union After Vote
Workers at Dominion Resources’ Millstone Power Station in Waterford, Conn., last week rejected a measure to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The vote was 183 for unionization to 222 against.
IBEW officials claimed that Dominion allowed some employees to take part in the election who shouldn’t have been eligible, including supervisors. “The company spent a tremendous amount of money to get the results to go their way,” said John Fernandes, business manager for IBEW Local 457.
A Millstone spokesman said the company was pleased with the results.
More: EnergyCentral