POWER

The 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) appointed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu in January 2010 to provide comprehensive recommendations for a long-term solution to managing and disposing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste released its much-anticipated final report last week.

The hazards of coal dust accumulation in power plants are familiar to coal-fired plant operators. Operators of plants that burn Powder River Basin coal are particularly aware of necessary housekeeping and fuel-handling practices, but any plant that allows excessive amounts of coal dust to accumulate is playing Russian Roulette with its staff and equipment.

The National Fire Protection Association has issued a new standard for gas line cleaning in response to the urgent recommendations prepared by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

French company ProSim, which provides process simulation and optimization software to the process industries, released a new version of BatchReactor, its software for batch chemical reactors simulation. The new software combines detailed equipment modeling, reaction engineering, and advanced numerical methods to create a state-of-the art simulation environment for chemists and chemical engineers, providing a complete […]

A federal district court judge on Tuesday ruled that the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), must complete an environmental impact study (EIS) before any approvals or other major federal action can be taken on the $2.8 billion expansion at Sunflower Electric Power Corp.’s coal plant in Holcombe, Kansas. The ruling may delay construction of the 875-MW plant, a politically controversial project in the Kansas Legislature.

Creating a landfill to hold dry boiler ash is a challenging proposition these days. There’s more to the project than you might imagine, as you’ll learn from this article about the development of a typical new ash landfill.

POWER recently talked with Erika Jakobsson, a project manager at Volvo Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, who is responsible for developing intelligent trucks in response to European Union (EU) directives.

The Precision Controls Division of Marsh Bellofram Corp. launched the Type 41 high-performance air pressure regulator series, which is designed to support a variety of demanding industrial and original equipment manufacturer flow-monitoring requirements. Available in two different packages with identical performance characteristics, both with ¼-inch NPT BSPT port size, the Type 41 incorporates a patented […]

A high-voltage electricity panel arc reportedly sparked a brief fire at the 100-MW Nacogdoches Power, LLC biomass power plant under construction in Sacul, Texas, and sent two workers to hospital in critical condition on Tuesday.

The expectation of millions of "green jobs" has disappeared from public debate. Today, the debate is narrowly focused on "jobs" and selecting the best approach to developing permanent jobs, regardless of color. Some look to the government to create jobs through regulation or subsidy, and others trust companies operating under free market principles to create permanent jobs.

Synovus relies on emergency standby generator sets to prevent any loss of services or data in the event of a utility outage.

Silicon Designs, a designer and manufacturer of rugged industrial-grade microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) capacitive accelerometer chips and modules, has introduced a ±5 g model to its 2210 accelerometer series. The low-noise, single-axis model 2210-005 accelerometer module incorporates high-quality MEMS capacitive sensing elements. Sensing elements are packaged within a compact, lightweight, anodized epoxy-sealed aluminum housing, occupying a […]

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday released a white paper that seeks comment on its proposals to “provide a fair, timely and transparent process” for FERC to advise the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on requests for extension of time to comply with its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule.

Rules requiring removal of combustible dust from the workplace will undoubtedly improve worker safety and health. A survey of equipment suppliers finds a variety of dust collection systems are available to meet just about every dust collection need in the power house.

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.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., January 29, 2012 — Detroit is back and the year 2012 looks promising for U.S. automakers. But unlike the hype of early last year, the color that most of the auto industry is seeing in its dreams for 2012 isn’t green, it’s black. That’s in black ink, which has firmly […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., January 25, 2012 — For as long as most of us can remember, both U.S. political parties have been shouting from the partisan tree tops that the country needs an “energy policy,” whatever that might mean. The parties disagreed on just what it should be. The GOP’s mantra has always […]

President Barack Obama championed an “all-out, all-of-the-above strategy” in Tuesday’s State of the Union address to develop all U.S. energy sources, though his focus rested on renewables and natural gas—with no mention of coal or nuclear power.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday issued its first pilot project license to Verdant Power’s 1,050-kW Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) funding selection criteria to private companies could be improved by requiring applicants to provide guided explanations of why private investors were unwilling to fund projects, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds in a new report.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday announced a draft funding opportunity to establish cost-shared agreements with private industry for the design and licensing of small modular reactors (SMR), targeting their deployment by 2022.

A federal judge last week ruled that Entergy’s Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant—Vermont’s only reactor—can remain operating beyond a state-mandated shutdown deadline. State laws that would force the closure of the 40-year-old plant, which recently garnered a 20-year operating license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), are preempted by federal law, the judge said.

In response to a recent decision by a federal court judge that reinstates rules stayed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in early 2011 and that govern hazardous air pollutant standards for industrial boilers and commercial and industrial solid waste incinerators—so-called Boiler MACT rules—EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency was committed not to enforce those standards until April, when a new revised suite of boiler standards will be finalized.

Over the next two decades, the U.S. power profile will be markedly different as generation from coal declines, natural gas power and renewables surge, and nuclear generation decreases slightly, said the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its early release version of the Annual Energy Outlook 2012 on Monday. The full report, scheduled to be released this spring, presents updated projections of U.S. energy markets through 2035.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., January 24, 2012 – President Obama yesterday said he will nominate Tony Clark, retiring chairman of the North Dakota Public Service Commission to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, replacing departed commissioner Marc Spitzer in one of the two Republican seats on the commission. Clark was first elected to the North […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., January 21, 2012 — What’s a poor reader to do? Industrial giant General Electric, a crucially important company for many in the energy biz and long a stalwart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, announced its fourth quarter economic performance this week. The New York Times, which always follows GE […]