POWER

Manufacturer of heavy-duty industrial vacuums and vacuum systems VAC-U-MAX introduces its updated Model 1020 Continuous Duty Industrial Vacuum. The VAC-U-MAX Model 1020 features a powerful positive displacement pump designed specifically for high-volume recovery of up to 5 tons per hour. It is also used in the recovery of heavy materials, including steel shot, foundry sand, […]

A new project planned by RWE and partners Nexans, the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), and Jülich is poised to mark another milestone for high-temperature superconductor (HTS) cable technology, which transports electricity without losses when cooled down to about –200C (–392F).

As our seasons transition, so may the fire and deflagration hazards from coal and combustible dust that once were visible and now may be out of sight. Yet often, what is out of sight presents the greatest hazard and risk.

A year has passed since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was destroyed by earthquake and tsunami. What is the economic price Japan must pay?

The first unit of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI’s) much-watched J-Series gas turbine, a technology MHI has been testing for a year, was shipped this December from its Takasago Machinery Works in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, for commercial use at Himeji Unit 2, also in Hyogo, owned by Kansai Electric Power Co.

Putting more money and effort into information and information technology will pay solid returns when it comes to understanding and adapting to the world around us, including our changing climate.

Two identical 50-MW parabolic trough plants with thermal storage in Cadiz, in the south of Spain, began operating this January.

The energy trading business is changing as Wall Street adjusts to the requirements of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. What does that mean to you?

The ambitious Desertec project—a $9 billion initiative to develop, harness, and transmit 2,000 MW of renewable power from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe by 2050—has been trumped by a vaster concept that spans Asia and Australia.

Is your organization being held back by a “server hugger?”

RusHydro Inaugurates New Unit at Restored Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydropower Plant. RusHydro —a hydroelectricity company that is majority-owned by the Russian Federation—announced in mid-December that it had put its first brand new hydropower unit into commercial operation at its Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower plant on the Yenisei River, near Sayanogorsk in the Republic of Khakassia. Following the catastrophic accident […]

In order to ramp up the success of planned outages at its power plants and lower the risk of unexpected and costly problems, OG&E management has begun using the outage readiness index process. This method identifies and defines the scope of the work needed prior to the commencement of an outage and quantifies the amount of preparedness needed to implement the outage in the most cost-effective manner.

Eliminating the negative and accentuating the positive in the workplace. Here’s the roadmap.

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.

When the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, the response of the Western nuclear industry was, “It can’t happen here.” And then there was Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011. Was one disaster worse than the other?

Houston-based GenOn is the latest of a string of power firms to announce planned power plant closures in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey. The company formed in December 2010 through the merger of Mirant Corp. and RRI today announced it would deactivate 3,140 MW of generating capacity in PJM’s operational region between June 2012 and May 2015, citing insufficient “forecasted returns on investments necessary to comply with environmental regulations.”

In a landmark ruling that some analysts are calling a “major victory” for the hydropower sector, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court last week overturned a March 2010 decision by the Montana Supreme Court that entitled the state of Montana to collect $89 million in back rent from PPL Montana for that company’s use of state-owned riverbeds for long-standing hydropower plants.

An updated roadmap for the smart grid is now available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which recently finished reviewing and incorporating roughly 240 comments on the draft version that was released for public comment in October last year.

A severe blaze that broke out on Monday morning at RWE npower’s 750-MW Tilbury power station—a plant recently converted from coal to biomass that has been billed as a pioneer in its use of that technology—raged for two days, until Tuesday, when it was brought under control. All employees at the plant have been accounted for.

A proposed rule issued on Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will not change the greenhouse gas (GHG) permitting thresholds for the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and Title V Operating Permit programs. However, it includes revisions to the permitting program that would provide some flexibility in how compliance is achieved with GHG emission caps.