Federal officials hold Lake Powell water to preserve hydropower

HYDROPOWER: Federal officials will hold back water in Lake Powell this summer to keep water levels above the minimum needed for hydropower production. (New York Times) 

GRID:
• Portland General Electric opens a $207 million integrated grid operations center to monitor power supply and demand in its 4,000-square-mile service area. (Sherwood Gazette)
• Bonneville Power Administration and Tucson Electric Power join the Western Energy Imbalance Market. (S&P Global)

WIND: A national historic preservation organization says a proposed Idaho wind facility threatens the Minidoka National Historic Site, a World War II internment camp. (Boise State Public Radio)

BIOFUELS: A California county rejects environmentalists’ bid to block an oil company from converting a petroleum refinery into a biofuel production facility. (KPIX)

OIL & GAS:
• New Mexico’s oil and gas industry wages a public relations campaign implying that drilling regulations could harm public schools. (Guardian)
• Republican U.S. lawmakers block land conservation bills that would have restricted drilling in parts of Washington state and Colorado. (E&E News, subscription)
• Alaska environmentalists urge federal land managers to weigh the risk of a natural gas leak like the one at a ConocoPhillips facility last month when considering the company’s proposed Willow development. (E&E News, subscription)
• A midstream energy company plans to expand oil and gas pipelines out of the Permian Basin to accommodate increasing demand. (Carlsbad Current-Argus)
• ExxonMobil says it has reduced methane emissions from its Permian Basin oil and gas facilities thanks to increased leak detection. (Carlsbad Current-Argus)

TRANSPORTATION:
• An electric vehicle battery materials startup with backing from Mercedes-Benz begins building a large-scale silicon-anode factory in Washington state. (Forbes)
• Colorado lawmakers advance a bill that would allocate $28 million to pay for free public transit rides when ozone levels are high. (Colorado Sun)
• A Denver, Colorado, neighborhood plans to build a solar-powered electric bike ​“library” for sharing the bikes. (9News)

HYDROGEN: Pacific Gas & Electric prepares to launch a demonstration facility to study the feasibility of blending hydrogen and natural gas in pipelines. (Green Car Congress)

NUCLEAR: Oregon nuclear startup NuScale, which plans to build a small modular reactor battery in Idaho, begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange. (Oregonian)

SOLAR: A California school district plans to construct a 1.4 MW solar-plus-storage installation. (news release)