San Francisco Peakers Make First CEC Cut

The California Energy Commission decided at its April 21 business meeting that San Francisco?s application for three peaker units totaling 145 MW has enough data to continue in the siting queue. Representatives from the Bayview/Hunters Point community?an area suffering from air pollution from Highway 101, Pacific Gas & Electric?s old Hunters Point plant, and industrial facilities?urged the commission to find the application inadequate because it fails to look at the cumulative impacts of pollution from the peaker units along with that from other power projects. The community continues to object to keeping the Hunters Point facility on line after the peakers fire up and worries that Mirant?s Potrero upgrade project, which has been stalled for months, will go forward. ?That would spell absolute total disaster for my community,? warned Marie Harrison of GreenAction. According to the group, one in four children in the community suffers from asthma, and women there suffer a high rate of breast cancer. While San Francisco wants to begin peaker operations, PG&E is seeking a five-year air permit for the circa-1929 Hunters Point plant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District early next month. ?I?m skeptical that this commission has the ability to do anything having to do with the operation of a plant owned by another company,? said commissioner John Geesman. Although the commission may be unable to affect existing facilities, it has the authority to conduct a cumulative impact analysis as part of the certification public hearing process. The city?s peaking units, if approved, would help ease constraints on the transmission cul-de-sac that terminates in San Francisco, a source of reliability concerns. ?We hope we can deal with resource adequacy before we get a bad roll of the dice,? said CEC chair Bill Keese. Also adopted on a 3-0 vote were three guidebooks governing the renewables portfolio standard (RPS) program, required by SB 1078 and SB 1038. One guidebook addresses RPS eligibility criteria, another deals with supplemental energy payments, and the third focuses on the administration of the program. Still in the works is a tracking system for the RPS program. Geesman noted that a renewables solicitation is ?still months away.? Contracts worth a total of $3.6 million were awarded to successful bidders in the Public Interest Energy Research program?s combined heat and power solicitation. CMC Engineering won a $1.5 million microturbine demonstration project; DE Solutions got $1.2 million for standardizing cost-effective chillers and heat management systems; and Tecogen was awarded $942,000 for developing a cost-effective and efficient heat and power engine package. One-year extensions on three contracts for a range of services, each worth $1.2 million, were also approved. The agreements are with Navigant Consulting, ICP Associates, and Science Applications International Corp.

Over 11K Stories!

| Independently Powered Energy News

San Francisco Peakers Make First CEC Cut

vdharadmin

Related Posts

Auld Lang Zine

PacifiCorp to Join ISO’s Proposed Expanded Day Ahead Market, Adding Regional Grid Momentum

Higher Winter Natural Gas Prices in and Outside California: FERC

Shareholders Mostly Lose in Quest for PG&E Brass to Share the Pain