POWER

By Thomas W. Overton, JD San Diego, 16 March 2012 — Yesterday, the NRC announced that it is sending a special team to San Onofre after several steam generator tubes in one of the reactors failed an inspection. This isn’t good, but probably sounds worse than it is. First, full disclosure and some background: I […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., 14 March 2012 — Climate science is a wicked mess. That’s not a political statement or a casual description of the difficulties of the man-made global warming knife fight. It’s a technical term some social scientists use to shed light on complex, convoluted, interconnected problems. It also provides a useful […]

A bill passed with a bipartisan vote of 265–154 by the U.S. House last week seeks to fast-track permitting for hydropower installations of 1.5 MW or less in canals and pipelines by minimizing environmental reviews.

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) last week detailed its “FLEX” response strategy, a program that calls for more safety and emergency response equipment at each of the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors. According to the trade industry group, “The initiative commits every U.S. company operating a nuclear energy facility to order or enter into contract for a plant-specific list of emergency equipment by March 31.”

A report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) claims that though the U.S. solar power sector was hard hit by policy changes and plunging global prices of photovoltaic (PV) panel prices, it installed 1,855 MW of PV capacity last year—more than doubling the previous annual record of 887 MW set in 2010.

The Department of Energy has made $15 billion in loan guarantees and conditionally committed to another $15 billion, but its loan guarantee program lacks much-needed consolidated data on application status, which could make easier efficient management and program oversight, a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found. The report was released on Monday, just before Energy Secretary Steven Chu defended the Obama administration’s loan programs before a Senate committee.

A bill introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday could force the government to provide rebates for $35.8 billion collected in the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund since 1983 to help build and operate the permanent federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, customers have been paying […]

Dynegy Inc.’s transfer of some coal plant assets to itself from its subsidiary Dynegy Holdings two months before the latter company filed for bankruptcy protection last November represented a “fraudulent transfer,” a court-appointed examiner in the bankruptcy case said in a report released on Friday.

Exelon Corp. and Constellation Energy on Monday completed their long-awaited $7.9 billion merger. The combined company, which retains the Exelon name, has a market cap of $34 billion, a 35-GW generation fleet, and activity in 47 U.S. states and some Canadian provinces. It is now the biggest power utility in the U.S.—until the $26 billion Duke-Progress merger is completed, at least.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) on Thursday introduced the Clean Energy Standard Act (CES) of 2012, a bill that could require some utilities around the nation to ensure at least 24% of all power sold in 2015 could be defined as “clean energy.” Under the bill, by 2020, that percentage would grow to 39%, by 2025, 54%, and by 2035, 84%.

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that Albuquerque, N.M.–based PNM could not delay enforcement of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandate that would force it to install pollution controls at its 1,800-MW coal-fired San Juan Generating Station near Farmington, N.M., while the issue is considered by the court.

Edison International last week said it was unable to secure financing for more than $700 million in scrubbers and other air pollution equipment required by state and federal regulations to continue operating the beleaguered 1,884-MW Homer City Generating Station Pennsylvania. The news comes on the heels of the announced closure of the firm’s two Chicago coal-fired power plants by 2014.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) on Tuesday submitted a revised open access transmission tariff to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), addressing situations that occur mostly in the springtime when the Columbia River surges and there is too much power available for delivery.

A new report released last week by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) finds that loss of reactive power is the most likely outcome from a severe solar storm centered over North America.  Significant losses of reactive power could lead to voltage instability, and, if not identified and managed appropriately, power system voltage collapse could occur, the report concludes.

A report presented to China’s legislature on Monday by Premier Wen Jiabao could have positive implications for the country’s centrally owned grid and nuclear firms, but they could leave "thermal generators out in the cold," experts said.

In the keynote address to the CERAWeek 2012 conference in Houston on Tuesday, Helge Lund, president and CEO of Norway-based Statoil, urged the oil and gas industry to embrace a greater sense of responsibility in facing its current and future challenges.

Three Memorandums of Agreement (MOA) between the U.S. government entities and private companies signed on Friday will seek to leverage Savannah River’s land assets and energy facilities near Aiken, S.C., to support potential private sector development, testing, and licensing of prototype small modular reactor (SMR) technologies.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday announced a planned six-year $180 million initiative—including an initial commitment of $20 million this year—to accelerate the deployment of four offshore wind power projects in the U.S. The funds are subject to congressional appropriations.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., March 4, 2012 — Conflating climate and energy policy in the U.S. over the past several decades has produced incoherent policy in both areas, along with considerable confusion and loss of focus, argues economist Denny Ellerman in the current issue of Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, the journal of […]

ProEnergy Services (PES) was recently contracted to install six Frame 7 DLN1.0 dual-fuel assemblies in Venezuela. The problem: The lead time to purchase the conversion hardware from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) would not meet the customer’s schedule. The only option was for PES to convert the fuel nozzles removed from a gas-only unit to a dual-fuel configuration, a process that had never before been attempted.

By thoroughly planning their outage strategies well in advance, Southern Company personnel are better able to achieve a number of important objectives, including improving unit economic performance, reducing unplanned maintenance outage hours, completing outages on time and within budget, and ensuring that outage workmanship is of the highest quality.

A lot of attention has focused recently on federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing through the Environmental Protection Agency. But EPA’s ineptitude in air regulation makes a case for state-by-state regulation of oil and gas drilling.

Turbine inlet fogging has been in use now for 20 years in combustion turbine plants. It is an obvious choice for boosting power in hot, dry areas such as Nevada or Arizona, where plants have long used fogging, but it has also proven effective in many other climates.

For the past 15 years, Vietnam has enjoyed enviable gross domestic product increases, averaging 7% annually. That kind of economic growth increases power demand, but financing new capacity remains a challenge. Reaching its ambitious capacity growth goals will require Vietnam to expand its financing and vendor base, attract foreign investment, and ensure future fuel supplies in a region thick with competition for those resources.

Is a changing climate producing greater economic losses from weather events? Or could it be a simple matter of inflation?

The Philippine Coal Plant Users’ Group (PCPUG), the leading nonprofit organization involved in generating electricity in the Philippines, recently held a conference introducing its mission and vision.

Planning for resource adequacy—something that was relatively simple in the context of vertically integrated utilities—continues to be a difficult issue in competitive electricity markets. Whereas state public utility commissions used to have exclusive authority to determine what generation needed to be built and when it was to be available, this responsibility has been assumed by RTO/ISOs in regions with competitive markets. Each region approaches resource planning differently, and each region faces unique problems.

We always talk about project management but rarely discuss project leadership.  There’s a difference.

The POWER Plant of the Year for 2011 was Kansas City Power & Light’s 850-MW Iatan 2, located about 30 miles northwest of Kansas City.

Several new models of plug-in electric vehicles will enter the market in 2012, joining the Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet Volt. The Edison Electric Institute has prepared four suggestions to help utilities smoothly handle the introduction of these vehicles to roads and grids.