Utilities Sector

Feds: Greatest Risk for Summer Power Grid Problems Is in Texas

It's that time of year again, when the feds single out Texas' precariously thin power reserves. Even California -- a state not known for electrical reliability -- is projected to experience fewer problems with its power grid as the summer heat drives residents to their thermostats. A reserve margin ... More >>

Coal Is Making a Comeback, and Nobody Burns it Like Texas

For a time, coal was moribund, on life support. We thought perhaps the country was permanently shrugging off its dependence on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants were being mothballed en masse. The share of electricity generated by them fell 25 percent between 2005 and 2012. ... More >>

Report: Customers Have Forked Over $500 Million to Cover Oncor's Phantom Tax Payments

Dallas-based utility Oncor has collected half a billion dollars from ratepayers to cover federal income taxes it has never paid. Last year alone, customers paid $230 million to reimburse the utility for a "phantom" tax bill, according to a new report from the Texas Coalition for Affordable Power. T ... More >>

ERCOT Says There May Not Be Enough Juice in the Power Grid To Prevent Rolling Blackouts This Summer

Just in case all this temperate whether has lulled you into the perception that the Texas power grid doesn't have the thinnest margin of safety between lights on and lights out anywhere in the country, here's a reminder: Summer is coming. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, says the odds th ... More >>

U.S. Electricity Grid Watchdog to ERCOT: You Aren't Doing Enough to Keep Lights on in Texas

Gerry Cauley, the chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the national, industry-funded grid-integrity watchdog, is pretty worried about Texas. Power-reserve margins here have slipped below the levels recommended to meet peak demand, and future projections show it will on ... More >>

Texas Electricity Generators Got Another Big Bailout from State Energy Regulators Yesterday

Here we are, some 10 years into the deregulation of the Texas electricity grid, and a crisis approaches. Supply, it is predicted, will not keep pace with demand in the very near future. Generators say electricity prices are simply too low to justify the financing of new power plants. In fact, in at ... More >>

Judge Halts Dallas' Flow Control Plan, Basically Calls City Hall a Bunch of Liars

A federal judge has ruled that the City of Dallas pretty much lied about every single aspect of its so-called "flow-control" trash program. Judge Reed O'Connor granted a permanent injunction against a new city ordinance that would have forced commercial haulers to take all their trash to the city- ... More >>

Report Predicts More Shutdowns of Coal-fired Power Plants, But Not in Texas

Rock-bottom natural gas prices have forced the wonks over at the Brattle Group to revise their national prediction for the number of coal-fired power plants likely to retire in the coming years steeply upward. And when we say steeply, we mean by some 25 gigawatts, or roughly enough electricity to po ... More >>

City Council Dismisses Concerns About Burning Garbage, Adopts Long-Term Plan

Many people were not happy when the city unveiled its long-term solid waste management plan. It's goal of achieving zero waste by 2040 was admirable enough, but the plan pushed consideration of such measures as a plastic bag ban, mandatory recycling and increased composting efforts out a decade or m ... More >>

Mitt Romney Wants to Kill Wind-Power Tax Credits, Which Worries Texas' Wind Industry

Mitt Romney did himself no favors in Iowa when a spokesman told the Des Moines Register the candidate would "allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits." In Iowa and much of the Midwest, t ... More >>

Because Summertime Ain't for Thinkin'

Texas Has the Worst Electricty Grid in the Nation

You might have already figured this out given the perennial threat of rolling blackouts and grid operator ERCOT's own admission that, come 2013, there won't be sufficient wattage to cover peak demand, but the state's electrical grid isn't the best. In fact, as the Texas Tribune reports today, it's t ... More >>

In August, the Price Cap on Electricity in Texas Will Jump 50 Percent

Texas electricity regulators voted today to raise the price cap on wholesale electricity from $3,000 to $4,500 per megawatt hour -- the equivalent of powering roughly 330 homes for one hour -- by Aug. 1. It's only June and already the electrical grid is being tested by record peak demand, prompting ... More >>

Politics of Misdirection: Dallas-based Luminant and Coalition of Utilities Blame the EPA for Coal's Creeping Demise

Dallas-based Luminant, the electricity generation arm of Energy Future Holdings, and a number of other utilities that own coal-fired fleets are attempting to head off an EPA rule that would curb the amount of nervous system-disrupting mercury, cancer-causing dioxin, arsenic and lead emitted from the ... More >>

Riot Fest 2012 Expands From Chicago to Dallas, Brings Rise Against, Andrew W.K., The Sword and More

Are you experiencing Festival Fatigue yet? Too bad. One more all-day-er has been announced for the summer: In addition to Toronto and Brooklyn, Chicago-based punk circus Riot Fest is expanding its reach to Dallas on September 22 at Gexa Energy Pavilion. Rise Against, Descendents, Municipal Waste, ... More >>

Why Does TXU Want Texas to Raise the Price Cap on the Electricity it Buys?

Here's a question for all you MBAs in Unfair Park Land: Why would an independent retailer operating in a free, deregulated market want the state to take steps to suddenly raise the retailer's costs? For example, say you own a mom-and-pop store that sells tomatoes. The government suddenly wants to i ... More >>

Harold Simmons' Radioactive Waste Dump Gets the Go-Ahead from State Regulators

A radioactive waste disposal company owned by Harold Simmons' Dallas-based Contran Corp. has been given the green light by state regulators to dispose of low-grade radioactive waste at a West Texas site. Representative Lon Burnam, who says he possesses confidential documentation exposing an undercu ... More >>

To Keep the Lights On, Texas Utility Regulators May Triple the Electricity Price Cap

The Texas Public Utility Commission is finally spitballing dollar figures for just how high they're willing to let wholesale electricity prices spiral when weather extremes send us to our thermostats. For the moment, we're sitting at $3,000 per megawatt-hour. To keep the lights from going out (ERCO ... More >>

Texas' Biggest Power Supplier Wants to Blame the EPA for Future Blackouts

Clean Electricity Bill Could Be A Bonanza For Shale Barons

A senator from New Mexico has proposed a bill that could change the face of Texas electric generation. And it has another interesting side-effect: It could reinvigorate a shale gas play depressed by tanking prices. U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committ ... More >>

At a Time When Texas Electricity Is Scarce, Does It Make Sense To Export It To Mexico?

A company that supplies electricity to Texans called American Electric Power filed to renew its application to export electricity to Mexico with the U.S. Department of Energy back in December. It operates a 720-megawatt coal-fired power plant near Vernon, and apparently it has been supplying our so ... More >>

The Market Speaks: Texas Coal-Fired Power Officially Unprofitable in January

Coal-fired power plants generated some 30 percent less electricity in January than they did during the same month in 2011 -- a huge drop for a a workhorse fleet that has historically fed this state's sprawling transmission system with a steady supply of baseload power since pretty much forever. Pro ... More >>

Addison's New Water Tower Is Also a Power Plant and An Art Project!

A Friend of Unfair Park dispatches this look at Addison's new water tower, which is presently making the rounds on Reddit. And, yes, those are wind turbines on top -- 10 total, each eight feet tall, the point of which is to operate the water tower and power the street lights on Arapaho. The city's ... More >>

Keeping the Lights On In Texas is Really Starting to Scare State Lawmakers

We watch a three-hour House State Affairs Committee hearing so you don't have to! Seriously, though, the future reliability of the Texas electrical grid is really starting to freak state legislators the fuck out. The watchword these days is "resource adequacy" -- bureaucrat-ese for "Remember those o ... More >>

University of Texas Fracking Study: No Evidence That It Contaminates Groundwater

​The University of Texas released the preliminary results today of that comprehensive study on the controversial natural gas producing process known as hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), drawing no link between it and claims of groundwater contamination. "While there have been casing/cement ... More >>

"Sounds Too Good to Be True": WFAA Sifts Through a Few Issues With Flow Control

​The council may or may not vote on that ordinance involving the redirecting and recycling of solid waste today. It all depends where flow control falls on the action-packed agenda, which includes passing the budget (that should go smoothly) and debating Yucatan and Service Bar's denied-at-CPC spe ... More >>

Your Water Bill's Going Up This Year. And the Year After That. And the ... Well, You Get It.

Click to embiggen ... or just go to Page 29 in this budget briefing.​I mention this in the comments below, but the 5.91 percent increase in our Dallas Water Utilities bill comin' this fall won't be the last one any time soon. Matter of fact, per this morning's council briefing, this is but the fir ... More >>

Talking With the Trashman About Flowetry: Solid Waste Haulers Make New Pitch to City

​First, let me apologize for the headline -- I was listening to Billy Bragg and friends on the way into work this morning, and it could not be helped. Now, then. It's been a whole two days since last we discussed flow control -- I know, right? -- which, as you're well aware, involves the city forc ... More >>

Talking Trash with Mary Suhm, Because You Have Not Heard the Last of Flow Control

​Last we looked, the council tabled till after its summer vacation a proposal from Marys Suhm and Nix to force all the solid-waste haulers in the city to dump their trash at the McCommas Bluff Landfill rather than one of the dozen other sites in the region. The city manager and head of Sanitatio ... More >>

Before the Council Talks Trash This Morning ...

​No doubt most of you aren't all that concerned where your garbage gets dumped, so long as it's picked up and hauled off on time. That said, the subject's slowly but surely becoming a hot topic at City Hall, as City Manager Mary Suhm and Sanitation Services Director Mary Nix make their solid-waste ... More >>

Talking Trash With the City Manager As She Looks At Ways to Generate Additional Revenue

​In a few weeks, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm will present to the city council some revenue-generating brainstorms she hopes could offset some of this year's $60-million-and-maybe-more budget shortfall. Among her proposals, she tells Unfair Park, will be one familiar to anyone paying attention la ... More >>

Solid Waste-rs Tell Caraway They Really Don't Want to Be Told Where to Dump Trash

​Last June, we took a look at some moneymaking brainstorms Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm presented to the city council, which Suhm hoped would offset some of the $131-million budget shortfall with which she was faced at the time. Among them was one in particular that didn't get very far, or so it ... More >>

Got Something to Say About Coal Ash Pollution? The EPA Wants to Hear From You Today.

Lower Colorado River AuthorityA new Sierra Club report says coal ash from Central Texas' Fayette Power Plant is polluting the groundwater nearby.​One month since the EPA's stolid road warriors blew threw Arlington to get your thoughts on pollution from gas drilling, the agency's making its triumph ... More >>

Less Than Two Years After Redo Began on White Rock Lake Spillway, an Official Dedication

​As you no doubt recall, the rains of March '06 wreaked havoc upon the White Rock Lake Spillway -- retaining walls collapsed, and huge hunks of land were swallowed by the storms. Which is why, in August '08, the city council agreed to spend $16,748,070 to not only repair the damage, but upgrade th ... More >>

Feline Love

Because Four Units Are Better Than Two

Shocking

TXU Is All Coal-Fired-Up Over "Stop TXU" Ads. Surprising Much? Didn't Think So.

Canary in a Coal Mine

Garbage by Numbers

City's recycling rate takes a dive

Cash for Trash

The city's new recycling center is up and running, sort of

Trashy Questions

City auditors take a belated look at Dallas' recycling program

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Why Dallas' recycling program is a $17 million joke

Getting dumped

Despite shoddy science, bad economics, and catastrophic health risks, a West Texas border community may become the nation's nuclear dumping ground

Death on tap

Cryptosporidium kills AIDS victims in Dallas. Who will the pathogen claim next?

Trashed

State examiner recommends rejection of Ferris' controversial landfill-expansion permit

Talking trash

Ferris' landfill stays in limbo--while state regulators fight among themselves

Letters

FBI probes bribery allegations in Ferris

The Trashing of Ferris, Texas

When a giant came to a tiny town, it soon became clear that almost everyone has a price.