POWER

A fast-growing population means skyrocketing electricity demand for the desert Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The government is trying to meet this demand head-on with a massive build-out of gas turbine generation capacity, but long-term success will hinge on its ability to produce reliable domestic supplies of natural gas—a problem for a country whose existence has long been tightly tethered to crude oil production.

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LRCA) is slated to replace an aging gas-fired thermal plant outside Austin with a modern combined cycle facility. It’s an upgrade sure to be welcomed as the Texas electric market faces an increasingly murky future.

Once primarily deployed for peaking and industrial use, gas-fired combustion engines are becoming an increasing part of the baseload fleet because of their flexibility and ease of operation. Wärtsilä’s latest engine offers a new level of power and efficiency that can compete with gas-fired combustion turbines in baseload operations.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., 16 April 2012 — So clever of the White House. President Obama says his administration’s latest energy strategy — mimicking his GOP adversaries — is “all of the above.” This is the “welcome ever more trotters into the trough” approach. And most everybody who makes energy loves the free lunch. […]

Southern California faces a grim summer with electrical generation capacity stretched to the limit, as any prospects for a quick restart of the idled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) now appear all but dead.

Completion of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) second Watts Bar reactor will cost nearly double the $2.49 billion price estimated in 2007 and take much longer than the projected 60-month completion timeframe, a construction review undertaken by the federally owned corporation has revealed. TVA management pointed to mismanagement and faulty execution as reasons for the discrepancy.

Under a settlement agreement reached between environmental groups on Tuesday and Power4Georgians, the consortium of four electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) in Georgia will continue development of its $2.1 billion coal-fired Plant Washington but will shelve plans for its proposed 850-MW supercritical Ben Hill plant.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General Scott Pruitt last week filed a motion with a federal appeals court on behalf of the state, Oklahoma’s largest generator Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E), and Oklahoma Industrial Energy Consumers to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) regional haze rule.

A new joint venture between American Electric Power (AEP) and Kansas City–based Great Plains Energy seeks to reap advantages from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) Order 1000 and develop competitive transmission projects in the PJM Interconnection, Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and Midwest ISO transmission regions.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Wednesday announced a $30 million research competition intended to improve the performance and safety of energy storage devices, including hybrid energy storage modules being developed by the Department of Defense for military applications.

A report released by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on Tuesday examining the underlying technical factors leading to the loss of critical systems at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors concludes parameters set for tsunami flood protection were inadequate and that this led to the eventual loss of all practical cooling paths for the reactors.

China’s state-owned China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) on Monday announced it had fully completed and commissioned the fourth unit of the Qinshan Nuclear Power Phase II expansion nearly 60 days ahead of schedule.  The domestically engineered unit is China’s 15th operating nuclear power reactor.

A rare presidential directive issued on Tuesday by India’s government orders national coal supplier Coal India to sign fuel supply agreements (FSAs) with power producers, imposing penalties if supplies dip below 80% of the commitments. The directive responds to concerns from the nation’s coal generators, which say chronic coal shortages are stalling plans to build new plants.

Plunging prices for solar panels, overcapacity, and a recent, substantial slash of government subsidies for solar power in Germany have prompted a rash of major solar firms to declare bankruptcy. Solar Millennium AG’s U.S. subsidiaries—including Solar Trust of America—filed for Chapter 11 insolvency proceedings in a concerted action on Monday, while giant solar cell–maker Q-Cells filed for insolvency in a German court.

In a 4-1 vote, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday approved an application for two combined construction and operating licenses (COLs) for new Generation III+ reactors at V.C. Summer Station in Jenkinsville, S.C. The project has been proposed by South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G), principal subsidiary of SCANA Corp., and Santee Cooper, South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility.

A bipartisan group of U.S. House of Representatives members last week introduced a bill that would absolve companies that generate or transmit power under a federal emergency directive from violation of environmental rules or civil and criminal liability suits. The bill also directs the Department of Energy to minimize adverse environmental impacts in its emergency order.

A federal appeals court last week vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Sept. 15, 2010 disapproval of Texas’ State Implementation Plan (SIP), saying the federal agency overreached in its interpretation of portions of Texas state rules used to implement the Clean Air Act.

German utilities RWE and E.ON, parent companies of the Horizon joint venture, last week said they would not proceed with key plans to develop two new reactors in the UK. The decision could put the UK’s plans to stake its energy future on nuclear power in disarray.

Days after the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed an order by the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) granting a key permit to Mississippi Power’s 582-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) Kemper power plant, the PSC voted to temporarily allow the Southern Co. subsidiary to continue construction of the plant in Kemper County, Miss.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by 10 federal agencies and the governors of Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania on Friday seeks to promote the efficient and orderly evaluation of offshore wind proposals for the Great Lakes.

Rwanda’s Lake Kivu has a nickname: “Killer Lake.” The shimmering 1,040–square mile body of freshwater on the western branch of the Great East African Rift that straddles the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has had a bloody history. Not only was it the site of atrocity during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but scientists say that it is also one of three known “exploding lakes.”

Ascertaining the alignment of all machines in a multiple machine train has always been a cumbersome and time-consuming process. The new ROTALIGN ULTRA MultiCoupling feature allows the alignment of up to seven machines in a train to be measured simultaneously, with a single quarter rotation (or less) of the shafts. This saves time and resources […]

Three nuclear reactors under construction in the Eastern Hemisphere reached major milestones over the past few months. South Korea’s Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. connected its 960-MW Shin-Wolsong 1 reactor near Nae-ri to the grid on Jan. 27 and, a day later, its sister plant, the 960-MW Shin Kori 2 (Figure 5) in the southwest city of Gori. Both units are expected to become commercially operational this summer. And last December, Russia began commercial operation of its 950-MW Kalinin 4 plant, a V-320 model VVER 1000.

Ten years ago, I could not have written this column. The natural gas industry was different—limited domestic supply resulted in unstable prices. However, recent advancements in drilling technology have enabled the industry to discover, access, and produce abundant sources of natural gas in America. Because the industry has changed, the country’s energy future is now […]

The UK opened two massive offshore wind farms this February on the Irish Sea off the UK’s Cumbrian coast. DONG Energy, SSE, OPW, and a consortium of Dutch pension fund service provider PGGM and Ampere Equity Fund began commercially operating the 367-MW Walney wind farm, estimated to cost $1.58 billion, and Danish wind firm Vattenfall inaugurated the Ormonde Offshore Wind Farm.

India has been besieged by a coal shortage of unprecedented severity that has forced privately owned and money-strapped state-owned coal-fired power plants alike to rely on expensive imports from Indonesia and South Africa to replenish woefully inadequate stocks.

As a Valentine’s Day present to federal regulators, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera took the unusual step of suing the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The complaint alleges that the PHMSA has “abjectly failed to oversee the [California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC’s)] pipeline safety program or to ensure that federal pipeline safety standards are enforced.” The complaint chastises the PHMSA for “shirking that duty for over a decade, if not longer.”

CSP Giants Form Alliance. Concentrating solar power companies Abengoa, BrightSource Energy, and Torresol Energy in early March formed the Concentrating Solar Power Alliance, an organization dedicated to educating U.S. regulators, utilities, and grid operators about the unique benefits of concentrating solar power (CSP) and of thermal energy storage. The U.S. has more than 500 MW […]

An energy policy should be the result of inclusive debate and a consensus approach to the means to leverage all of a country’s energy assets, including innovation and technology, to the advantage of its citizens. Current U.S. energy policy fails on all counts.

Confined space work is often considered to be one of the most dangerous types of work performed in power generation settings. Confined spaces may contain hazardous atmospheres, they can trap entrants, and they generally can increase the hazards associated with otherwise common tasks. When the risks are not recognized, workers all too often regard incidents as surprises, but the hazards of working in confined space can be predicted, monitored, and mitigated. These “accidents” are caused by unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, or both; all accidents are preventable.