Energy

Rob Harris reports on ENMAX Corporation, a Canadian utility company that envisions a future where nothing is wasted and everything is gained.

ENMAX Corporation is a vertically integrated utility company completely owned by the City of Calgary, Alberta. Providing Albertans with electricity for over 100 years, ENMAX has more than 640,000 customers and annual revenue of C$1.7 billion.

Iris Seymour talks to Clatskanie People’s Utility District to learn about new projects powering electric generation for the region’s industries and residents.

Ram Power, Corp. is a renewable energy company based in Reno, Nevada, focused on developing, owning and operating geothermal power plants. It was founded in 2008 as Ram Power, Inc., by former senior executives from Ormat Technologies, which is also in the business of geothermal energy development. “We decided to form Ram Power because we wanted to have a piece of the action, and working at Ormat wasn’t as much fun as it used to be years earlier,” says executive vice president Dan Schochet, whose primary responsibility is business development.

NamPower, as Namibia’s national power utility, was established in 1964, with the ambitious vision of powering Namibia to new commercial heights. The utility’s major investment projects are among some of the largest ever carried out in Namibia and serve as the backbone of dynamic growth and diversification.

Blessed with great timing, investment funds and industry smarts, London-based Max Petroleum Plc jumped on a rare opportunity to buy a stake in the oil-rich Pre-Caspian Basin in 2005 and snapped up lucrative oil and gas licenses to 5,212 square miles of land—about the size of Connecticut—in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic bordering the Caspian Sea.

Three years ago, construction commenced on a new coal-fired power station in South Africa’s Limpopo Province, near the town of Lephalale, close to the border with Botswana. Named Medupi—which means ‘rain that soaks parched lands, giving economic relief’—the plant will consist of six 800 megawatt units which will come online progressively, with a completion date of 2015.

One of the most significant contributors to an organisation’s energy consumption is IT, and the data centre in particular. The Carbon Reduction Commitment (or CRC Energy Scheme) has made it more important than ever that data centres are built to a high specification for maximum energy efficiency. The UK’s first mandatory carbon trading scheme, it affects around 5,000 organisations, and is compulsory for large organisations using more than 6,000 MWh/year of half-hourly metered electricity—or around £500,000 in electricity bills.

The plant, to be named Shams 1, will have a 100 megawatt capacity and would qualify for carbon credits under the United Nation's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). It will be constructed in the desert, 75 miles from Abu Dhabi.

The plant, which will cover an area of 2.5 square kilometres, is designed to offset the equivalent of 175,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. It will contain 768 parabolic trough collectors, to be supplied by Abengoa, with an initial operating lifespan of 25 years.

The Ledcor Group has roots as deep as the oil, gas and natural resources it has long helped its clients mine from beneath the earth in Western Canada. The company got its start in 1947 when founder William Lede built the access road and well site for Leduc No. 1, the rig that led to Imperial Oil's famous discovery of oil in the province of Alberta.

The original refinery was built in 1938 and purchased by San Joaquin Oil Co. in 1968. In 1979 the refinery became San Joaquin Refining Co., Inc.,a privately heldcompany located in Bakersfield, California. Major upgrades were accomplished in 1975, 1987, and again in 2001. Bakersfield is in Kern County, located in the San Joaquin Valley.