A familiar sound at our house recently has been the screech of electrical gadgets sending out one last desperate distress call, as they die from another Portland General Electric (PGE) power failure. “How long will it last this time,” we wonder? Calls to PGE are infuriating, because they rarely provide essential information as to what […]
The era of small-modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) is upon us, but Oregon lives in the past. Oregon continues to ban nuclear power, while other states with a similar moratorium are taking action to reverse their bans and bring nuclear power to their states. Oregon voters approved a moratorium on the construction of any new nuclear […]
Portland General Electric is living a virtual power plant pipe dream, and ratepayers need it to come back to reality. PGE recently told regulators that “it is estimated that as much as 25% of flexibility could come from customers and distributed energy resources (DERs)” on the hottest and coldest days by 2030, from sources including […]
It is almost the same story, time and again. Most people prefer to trust rather than verify, opening the door to fraud, sometimes fraud on an incredible scale. Just a little competent checking might have prevented monumental disasters. Did anyone note the recent passing of one of the most brazen con men of all time: […]
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 […]
Rarely has Oregon’s lack of political leadership been as painfully obvious as it is now on the topic of grid reliability. Most of us take for granted the miracle of electricity. We flip a switch and the lights come on. Computers, air conditioners, smartphones—all powered by the magic of the grid. We don’t care how […]
It was said of the Bolshevik Revolution that Russia looked no different the day after. Yet she suffered a profound nightmare for seven decades and only managed to get out of it because an American President, Ronald Reagan, was able to orchestrate the peaceful economic collapse of the Soviet Union with his Russian counterpart, Mikhail […]
In a world awash with very serious problems, Oregonians seem trapped in an alternate reality. Our senior U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is most concerned about collusion with Russia, when a fat, belligerent, and very erratic tyrant in another far off land is fast acquiring nuclear weapons that will soon be able to strike the United […]