Just four days before legislative adjournment, House Bill 3409 passed the Oregon House and has moved to the Senate in a race to the finish by June 25. HB 3409 establishes a state goal of installing 500,000 electric heat pumps in Oregon homes or commercial buildings by 2030. The bill was never heard in a […]
EPIC FAIL: Green Energy Collapses in Texas It was billed as the storm of the century, with bitterly cold arctic air covering Texas, all the way into Mexico. It became a Texas standoff at the OK Corral. Mother Nature was pitted against the heroes of modern electrical production: wind and solar. Who would ultimately survive […]
At 11:56 am on Thursday, October 15, Portland General Electric (PGE) pulled the plug on the Boardman Coal Plant, PGE’s largest power plant. Boardman had a nameplate capacity of 550 firm megawatts of power and was decommissioned 20 years prematurely. While environmentalists celebrate the plant’s closure, utility executives are still trying to figure out how […]
During our late July heat wave, I was talking with a man who was sweltering, because Portland General Electric had turned off his air conditioner as part of a program to shed load during periods of peak demand for electricity. He was being paid $50 for his trouble. That may sound like a good deal […]