Department of Energy July 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces BPA's intention to prepare an EIS on funding the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (YN) to undertake the reintroduction of coho salmon into mid-Columbia River basin tributaries. The reintroduction would occur in the Methow and Wenatchee river basins in Chelan and Okanogan counties, Washington. The proposed reintroduction project would use both existing hatchery facilities as well as require construction of some new permanent and temporary facilities and modification of existing sites to serve as semi-natural rearing areas for juvenile coho.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) seeks supplemental comments regarding potential revisions to the posting requirements adopted in Order No. 720 of the Commission's regulations.

The Commission is proposing to revise its contract reporting requirements for those natural gas pipelines that fall under the Commission's jurisdiction pursuant to section 311 of the Natural Gas Policy Act or section 1(c) of the Natural Gas Act. The Commission is proposing to require the existing annual Sec. 284.126(b) transactional reports to be filed on a quarterly basis, require that the reports include certain additional types of information and cover storage transactions as well as transportation transactions, establish a procedure for the Sec. 284.126(b) reports to be filed in a uniform electronic format and posted on the Commission's Web site, and hold that those reports must be public and may not be filed with information redacted as privileged.

The Deputy Secretary of Energy approved the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Base Charge and Rates (Rates) for Boulder Canyon Project (BCP) electric service provided by the Western Area Power Administration (Western). The Rates will provide sufficient revenue to pay all annual costs, including interest expense, and repay investments within the allowable period.

In order to implement recent amendments to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to amend its test procedures for residential furnaces and boilers to provide for measurement of standby mode and off mode energy consumption. Specifically, the proposed amendments would incorporate into the DOE test procedures the International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC) Standard 62301, Household electrical appliances Measurement of standby power (First Edition 2005-06), as well as language to clarify application of this standard for measuring standby mode and off mode power consumption in furnaces and boilers. In addition, the proposed amendments would add new calculations to determine annual energy consumption associated with standby mode and off mode measured power. Finally, the amendments would modify existing energy consumption equations to integrate standby mode and off mode energy consumption into the calculation of overall annual energy consumption of these products. DOE is also announcing a public meeting to discuss and receive comments on the issues presented in this notice.

The Western Area Power Administration (Western), an agency of the DOE, intends to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) on the interconnection of the Grapevine Canyon Wind Project (Project) in Coconino County, near Flagstaff, Arizona. Foresight Flying M, LLC (Foresight) has applied to Western to interconnect the proposed Project to Western's power transmission system on its Glen Canyon-Pinnacle Peak Transmission Line. Western is issuing this notice to inform the public and interested parties about Western's intent to prepare an EIS, conduct a public scoping process, and invite the public to comment on the scope, proposed action, alternatives, and other issues to be