POWER

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., February 13, 2012 — Environmental activists have a long record of miscalculation and misadventure. That’s been particularly true when it comes to coal. Remember acid rain? No such thing, according to a decade-long government scientific inquiry (which can’t ever quite turn itself off). Global warming? A global yawn, Al Gore […]

Just two weeks after FirstEnergy Corp. said it would close more than 2 GW of six older coal-fired power plants Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland by September, the Akron, Ohio–based company today said it would retire three more plants in West Virginia. The company cited “high costs” to implement the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recently finalized Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS).

The two-unit San Onofre nuclear power plant in the northwest corner of San Diego County, Calif., remained shut down today, more than a week after a leak from a tube in one unit released a small amount of radiation. On Thursday, regulatory officials found extensive wear on tubes in the second unit, which is offline for maintenance. Also this week, reports confirmed that a worker had fallen into and climbed out of a reactor pool at the facility.

New Hampshire’s Legislature is considering a bill that could require Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH)—the state’s largest electric utility—to divest all 12 of its generation facilities by 2013 to complete restructuring of its electric sector. At a hearing on Thursday, PSNH staunchly opposed the measure, saying the bill could have “far-reaching economic risks, and reliability consequences for all New Hampshire business and residential customers.”

As the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) prepares to vote on Thursday on whether to approve a combined construction and operating license (COL) for Southern Co.’s proposed 2,234-MW expansion of its Vogtle nuclear plant, anti-nuclear activists are gearing up to oppose the decision. Meanwhile, Progress Energy is reportedly considering shelving its proposed Levy County, Fla., reactor.

A settlement reached between Dominion and conservation groups that was last week approved by a federal court makes the utility’s plans to shutter all four units at its 60-year-old Salem Harbor Station in Salem, Mass., by 2014 legally enforceable.

Renewable power prices in California surged from 5.4 cents/kWh in 2003 to 13.3 cents/kWh in 2011. However, they are slated to fall as new contract bids submitted to utilities last year were estimated at about 30% lower than in 2009, a new report from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) suggests.

More renewable power capacity was installed than ever before in the European Union (EU) during 2011, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) says in a new report published on Monday. The EU saw a 3.9% increase in power capacity compared with 2010, much of which was driven by renewable power capacity increases. In 2011, the EU added 37.7% more renewable power capacity than in 2010.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule for power plants has critics’ tempers flaring. Not surprisingly, a number of electric power representatives, industry groups, and elected officials oppose the rule, which was released on Dec. 21, 2011.

The electric power generation system is the backbone of our economy. Recently, however, sudden outages or rolling blackouts have increased.

Handheld smart devices providing custom applications and Internet access at the touch of a virtual button are common today. Hidden beneath their touchscreens is a global network of digital technologies that respond to each command. Will these familiar commercial technologies and apps make their way to industrial digital control systems?

Asset management means different things to different people. But it boils down to converting raw data and observations about equipment and components into information and knowledge that is then used, propagated, and shared by workers and digital components to manage performance. Nuclear plants have special asset management needs, given the level of their safety, reliability, and regulatory requirements.

The enhanced plant performance achieved at the 1,477-MW Morgantown Generating Station shows the value of model predictive control in conjunction with intelligent distributed control algorithms. This project update looks at how the project team moved from ramp rate improvements to reducing tube metal temperatures to improved component life.

Control loop performance-monitoring software can help to improve loop performance at electric power plants by automatically collecting data, assessing several aspects of loop performance, and providing the results in reports and user interfaces.

When then-President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, he noted that, “New technologies will help usher in a better quality of life for our citizens.” One provision of the act required an increase in the efficiency of newly manufactured lightbulbs, starting with 100-watt incandescent bulbs in 2012.

The consideration of power supplies has become critical to the success of converting analog instrumentation and control systems to digital control systems (DCSs). Careful planning is particularly necessary for nuclear power plants, where instrumentation systems are required for safely shutting down a reactor, mitigating the consequences of an accident, and performing post-accident analysis.

Of the $35.9 billion in loan guarantees awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) since 2009, roughly $26.5 billion have financed nuclear and renewable power projects across the nation through the Section 1703 and 1705 loan guarantee programs.

Brazil’s power industry has long been dominated by its vast hydro resources, which historically have accounted for over 80% of the country’s generation capacity. With engineering marvels like the massive Itaipú dam and the proposed Belo Monte project, the country is a leader in the development and use of hydroelectricity on a grand scale. But as the 2001 energy crisis proved, dependence on a single source leaves the country vulnerable to severe shortages. Thanks to government programs designed to take advantage of the country’s favorable climate, Brazil is committed to diversifying its energy mix while continuing to maintain a renewable energy focus.

The U.S. power sector will see heightened electricity consumption over the next two years, a spurt in natural gas–fueled power generation that is expected to offset a slight decline in coal power, and a significant decline in hydropower generation that could mark a decline in overall renewable generation, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) says in its latest short-term outlook.

A consortium of European developers, with funding from the German federal government, have completed a power plant in Prenzlau, near Berlin, Germany, that uses excess wind energy to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen in a process called hydrolysis, and then uses hydrogen and biogas to generate power and heat.

In January 2012 a new mercury control system at the Colstrip power plant in Montana reached its first major milestone: two years of operation with mercury emissions below the state regulatory limit. The plant uses Alstom’s unique Mer-Cure technology to capture up to 90% of the mercury leaving the stack.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Dec. 21 issued its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which will require about 40% of all coal-fired power plants in the U.S. to deploy pollution control technologies to curb emissions of mercury and other air pollutants such as arsenic and cyanide within three years.

Using nanoparticles of a copper compound to develop an inexpensive and durable high-powered battery electrode could be the breakthrough solution to the problem of sharp drop-offs in the output of wind and solar systems, scientists at Stanford University say.

In a power plant, the primary use of vacuum systems is to remove air and other noncondensable gases from the shell side of the condenser in order to maintain design heat transfer and thus design vacuum. If holding condenser vacuum is a persistent problem, one often-overlooked cause is an inadequately sized vacuum system.

A new report commissioned by the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE)—an alliance of about 70 solar companies whose rallying message declares global competition has made solar energy a reality around the world—finds that if the U.S. government imposes a 100% tariff on imported solar PV cells and modules from China, the nation could see as many as 50,000 net lost jobs over the next three years.

With the 2012 election year upon us, it promises to be an interesting time for energy politics and policy. Here are 12 (really 13 because of some creative headline writing) issues that will keep the sector hopping this year.

A semi-submersible structure supporting a 2-MW wind turbine was towed nearly 350 kilometers (217.5 miles) to water depths of about 35 meters (114.8 feet) into open Atlantic waters and deployed off the coast of Aguçadoura, Portugal, last November.

Compressible fluid flow through control valves will inevitably cause some form of flow-induced vibration in the fluid system. Identifying the type and cause of the vibration requires detective work. Determining the design changes required in the valve and fluid system to prevent the vibration from occurring requires advanced analytical techniques.

Citing newly finalized and proposed environmental regulations that could make costs uncertain, FirstEnergy Corp. on Thursday said it would shutter six older coal-fired power plants with capacities totaling 2,689 MW in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland by September. The same uncertainties prompted a major backer of a $2 billion coal-fired power plant planned for Washington County in Georgia to pull its funding.

At year end 2011, as Americans emptied their wallets at the gas pump and crude oil reached almost $100 a barrel, OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia reported an $81.6 billion 2011 budget surplus.