Related News
Related News
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Rate Setting Process is Customer Driven and Community Focused
EWEB’s Board of Commissioners is considering rate changes to help maintain reliable utility services and fund critical investments in Eugene’s water and electric infrastructure.
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Women in STEM: EWEB Engineer Laura Ohman's second degree brings a lifetime of benefits
EWEB Engineer Laura Ohman shares how getting her second degree was one of the most difficult and rewarding things she's ever accomplished.
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Planning for a Future of Reliable, Affordable, Environmentally Responsible Energy
The challenges revealed by Eugene Water & Electric Board’s integrated resource planning process mirror those facing the Northwest.
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EWEB’s heat driven call to conserve energy yields major savings
EWEB is likely to implement similar, formalized “demand response” programs in the future.
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How does EWEB recover the costs of serving customers
Here’s an overview of the three primary ways EWEB recovers the costs of serving customers and generates the funds needed to keep the power on and the water flowing.
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Please join your neighbors in reducing energy use today
With excessive temperatures and wildfire conditions affecting power generation across the region, EWEB is encouraging customers to safely conserve power.
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Women in STEM: Meet our servant leader and maker of tough decisions
Karen Kelley, Chief Operations Officer at EWEB, describes herself as a "servant leader," offering support and mentoring to four division managers at EWEB.
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Planning for a Reliable, Affordable, Green Energy Future
EWEB General Manager Frank Lawson publishes an op-ed in the Eugene Weekly about EWEB's IRP.
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Women in STEM: Meet the woman responsible for managing our wholesale energy agreements to ensure we meet our customers energy needs
Megan Capper, the Energy Resource Manager at EWEB, began her career working in economics at BPA before joining the power planning department EWEB, ensuring we can meet the energy needs of our our customers today, tomorrow and 20 years from now.
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EWEB establishes multipronged resiliency policy
Disaster recovery and prevention are being embedded in all operations and processes.
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Substations – The resilient spine of EWEB’s electric system
The substation redundancy ensures reliable power continues to flow to homes and businesses despite unexpected equipment failures and routine maintenance.
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EWEB charts energy supply choices for next 2-3 years
After 18 months of study to assess Eugene’s future electricity needs, EWEB has identified next steps to pursue in the next two to three years.
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Trends that are impacting your utility rates
Needed infrastructure investments and rising costs of operations will require increases in the price of water and electric services.
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Wildfire season is here – tips and safety precautions
Temperatures are heating up with weather forecasts anticipating temperatures up to 99 degrees in Eugene and the surrounding areas on the 4th of July.
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EWEB and City finalize sale of former riverfront headquarters
The two buildings on 4.4 acres will transformed into Eugene's new City Hall. EWEB and the City signed closing documents and officially handed over the site keys on Tuesday.
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New Agreement Protects Fish and EWEB Customers
October 26, 2016
For more than 50 years, Carmen-Smith has reliably served Eugene with low-cost hydropower. The plant remains valuable as a carbon-free generation resource that can ramp up and down to meet customers' peak energy needs. In other words, Carmen operates when our community needs power the most and when buying that power on the wholesale market would be most expensive.
We reached a Settlement Agreement with 16 partners representing fisheries and natural resource agencies, environmental groups, tribes and recreation organizations in 2008. This negotiated agreement formed the basis for new federal operating license.
This initial agreement provided major habitat enhancements, campground improvements, and fish-friendly plant operations including a fish passage system at Trail Bridge Dam. These significant investments were agreed to at a time when wholesale power prices in the region were strong and projected to persist or even rise.
Since 2010, while the license application was under federal review, regional wholesale power prices shrunk by 60 percent, making the 2008 settlement agreement uneconomic. EWEB and the original settlement parties were able to successfully request a pause in the federal license review and go back to the table to revise the agreement. This revised agreement will be formally adopted by the EWEB Board on November 1 and submitted to the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission by the end of the month.
The revised agreement still includes many investments in habitat restoration, aquatic enhance measures and recreational improvements that are now balanced with the economic realities of the regional energy markets. Fish passage will be accomplished by alternative method, using a "trap and haul" facility and spillway fish passage. EWEB will no longer generate power at the Trail Bridge powerhouse, giving up a bit of energy production in exchange for more cost effective less intrusive fish passage.
Altogether these revisions are expected to reduce capital investments by about $80 million and long-term operating costs by $1 million annually.
With approval of the revised agreement, Carmen-Smith can further forge a balance of our community's desire for clean energy with our responsibility to protect and enhance native and endangered fish populations for future generations.