Duke Energy last week said that testing was under way in preparation for commercial operation next year of its 630-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) Edwardsport power plant in Knox County, Ind.

The Kewaunee Power Station—a 556-MW nuclear facility in Carlton, Wis.—will be shut down and decommissioned starting in the second quarter of 2013, its owner Dominion said on Monday. The company said the decision to shutter the plant was based “purely on economics.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) extended until Nov. 29 an administrative stay of a federal implementation plan to address regional haze under the Clean Air Act at PNM Resources’ 1,800-MW San Juan Generating Station near Farmington, N.M. The agency’s action last week  gave the utility 45 more days to consider an alternative proposed by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), but did  not extend the current September 2016 compliance date of the federal implementation plan.

The owner of one of Victoria’s largest coal-fired power stations announced on Wednesday it would cut output at the Gippsland-based Yallourn power station, saying the July 1-implemented carbon tax is driving up operating costs and that Australia’s renewable energy target is squashing wholesale power prices to uneconomic levels.

Louisville Gas and Electric Co. (LG&E) on Monday said it would shut down three coal units in Kentucky—a total capacity of 563 MW—eight months earlier than originally planned.

The Department of Interior on Friday finalized its Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), establishing an initial set of 17 solar energy zones totaling about 285,000 acres of public lands that will serve as priority areas for commercial-scale solar development. The initiative is part of the Obama administration’s goal to authorize 10,000 MW of renewable power on public lands.

Bruce Power on Tuesday synchronized its Bruce Power Unit 2 to Ontario’s grid, marking a milestone in its program to refurbish Units 1 and 2 at the Bruce A nuclear generating station. The company, which synchronized the 750 MW Bruce A Unit 1 with the grid on Sept. 19, said that first synchronization of Unit 2 will allow it to carry out final planned commissioning activities at the plant.

A bipartisan delegation of lawmakers from Pennsylvania on Monday urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider creating a separate subcategory for power plants that convert coal refuse into energy in its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). Though waste coal plants made an important environmental contribution by reducing coal refuse piles, the hydrochloric acid (HCl) standard in the MATS rule could push them out of business, they said.

A123 Systems, maker of an advanced lithium iron phosphate battery and energy storage systems on Tuesday filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11, as Satcon, a provider of utility-grade power conversion solutions for the renewable energy sector, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday.

By Kennedy Maize (@kennedymaize) Washington, D.C., 15 October 2012 – Would Republican Mitt Romney be tougher-minded than Barack Obama when it comes to some of the most egregious energy subsidies flowing out of Washington? As election day mercifully approaches, a duo of libertarian energy experts has examined Romney’s rhetoric on energy. They find that “the […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday appealed a federal court decision handed down on Aug. 21 that vacated the agency’s July 2011–finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) because, the court said, it violated federal law. The EPA is now seeking a rehearing en banc that would involve all eight judges that serve at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Wednesday issued an air quality plan approval for a project to build the state’s first power plant to run at least partially on locally sourced Marcellus Shale gas. Moxie Energy’s proposed 936-MW plant in Asylum Township, Bradford County, uses two power blocks that will each consist of a combustion gas turbine and a steam turbine.

Czech utility ÄŒEZ on Wednesday told AREVA that a bid submitted to build two new EPR units at the Temelín Nuclear Power Plant—a site that already houses two VVER-1000 reactors built in 2000 and 2003—has been disqualified because it failed to fulfill “some other crucial criteria” defined in the tender. The decision, which AREVA said it would appeal, means only Westinghouse and an AtomStroyExport-led consortium remain as contenders for that project contract.

Global nuclear power capacity is expected to grow nearly 25% from current levels to 456 GW by 2030 according to low projections, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano told conference attendees in Kyoto, Japan, on Monday. The Fukushima Daiichi accident was a "big wake-up call" on nuclear safety, but it would not mean "the end of nuclear power," he said as he called on Japan to engage in dialogue about its stated policy to shut down all existing reactors by 2040.

Southern California Edison (SCE) last week outlined measures it had completed to correct issues identified in the steam generator tubes of its beleaguered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) Units 2 and 3, as requested by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). As part of a restart plan also submitted to regulators last week, the company proposed to restart Unit 2 at 70% power for a five-month trial period.

PPL Corp. on Friday said it was preparing to shut down Unit 1 of its two-reactor Susquehanna Nuclear Plant in northeastern Pennsylvania for additional turbine inspection and to confirm data provided by new instrumentation that could finalize a plan to resolve turbine blade cracking that has afflicted both reactors at the plant.

By Kennedy Maize (@kennedymaize) Washington, D.C., 6 Oct. 2012 — A big science boondoggle bit the dust this month, giving the quest for fusion energy another black eye. But look for the high-energy physicists who have been living off of fusion confusion for more than a generation to mount a rescue mission, claiming somehow that […]

The National Park Service on Monday approved a $1.2 billion 500-kV transmission line that will run from the Berwick area in Pennsylvania to Roseland, N.J., a project that developers Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G) and PPL Electric Utilities say will boost electric service reliability and provide a significant economic stimulus to the region.

An update to a 2010 analysis on the market and regulatory outlook facing coal-fired power plants in the U.S. from economists at The Brattle Group forsees that 59 GW to 77 GW of coal plant capacity are likely to retire over the next five years—about 25 GW more than previously estimated—due primarily to lower expected natural gas prices.

Repair of the damaged containment structure at Progress Energy’s Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida will likely hover at $1.5 billion, but it could escalate to as much as $3.5 billion and take eight years to complete in the worst-case scenario, an independent review of a potential repair plan shows.

A bill introduced on Friday by a ranking member of the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee seeks to reform the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Science Advisory Board (SAB) and its sub-panels to deal with concerns about “balance, impartiality, independence, and public participation.”

A settlement proposed by New Mexico’s Environment Department on Wednesday calls for retiring two units at the 1,800-MW San Juan Generating Station located 15 miles west of Farmington, N.M., by December 2017 and installing selective noncatalytic reduction, a less-costly air emissions control technology than one proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on the other two units, 3 and 4. Plant owner PNM Resources  said in statement that it was hopeful the state’s proposal would resolve a long-standing dispute with the EPA to address regional haze.

On Oct. 1, GenOn shuttered its 482-MW coal-fired Potomac River Generating Station as Progress Energy Carolinas retired three coal-fired units—two at the 316-MW Cape Fear plant near Moncure, N.C., and the 177-MW H.B. Robinson Unit 1 near Hartsville, S.C. Utah’s Rocky Mountain Power, a unit of PacifiCorp, meanwhile reportedly warned employees and public officials that it may close its 190-MW coal-fired Carbon Power Plant in northeastern Utah over the next few years because it has no room to install air emissions controls to make it compliant with federal rules by 2015.

The latest Environmental Protection Agency mercury control limits in the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards present a significant technical challenge to the power industry. Shaw offers a cost-effective process that promotes mercury oxidation and removal in fossil fuel combustion applications that can potentially achieve consistent mercury oxidation above 95%. Shaw’s E&I Group EMO technology provides the industry with an alternative to halogen salt addition and activated carbon injection that can also be used to augment the performance of existing Hg control applications and strategies

Growing hothouse tomatoes might not be the first application that comes to mind for a natural gas–fueled combustion engine, but that’s exactly what an innovative grower in Southern California is doing, with some help from General Electric (GE).

Upcoming revisions to U.S. federal effluent guidelines are anticipated to include new discharge limits for mercury and selenium in flue gas desulfurization wastewater, in addition to other potential revisions. Collaborative R&D is helping inform the rulemaking and is evaluating the cost and performance of technology options that might be used to meet the new targets.

Relatively simple upgrades to legacy turbine systems can yield big payoffs in efficiency and reduced maintenance.

In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed federal rules regulating coal combustion residuals (CCRs) for the first time to address the risks posed by coal-fired power plants’ disposal of such waste byproducts. The need for new regulations remains a topic of debate, heightened by the EPA’s reticence to release the rule. The EPA says that it will release the new rule by the end of this year–over two years late.

Cato Institute senior fellows Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren in an Aug. 31 Forbes website blog suggest that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) carbon pollution standard for new coal-fired power plants (Standard) is a meaningless skirmish in President Obama’s “war on coal.” The Standard may have no tangible impact on the industry in the future, but it has great strategic benefit to the administration.