POWER

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.

Last December, as Spain’s national carbon capture and storage (CCS) research laboratory Fundación Ciudad de la Energía (CIUDEN) began a much-watched testing phase of oxycombustion in its 30-MWth circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boiler in Cubillos del Sil, Vattenfall scrapped the €1.5 billion ($2 billion) Jänschwalde CCS demonstration project that it had planned to build and begin operating by 2015 in the German federal state of Brandenburg.

Turner Designs has introduced the Opti-Check Handheld Fluorometer for performing system verifications for industrial water process control applications. The Opti-Check is a small, lightweight, highly durable handheld fluorometer that is ideal for quick measurements in the field. Configurable for either PTSA or Fluorescein as well as both dyes, the Opti-Check enables monitoring of either cooling […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Tuesday urged owners of 62 nuclear power plants in the Central and Eastern U.S.—facilities housing 96 of the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors—to reevaluate seismic hazards using a new seismic model and information from a recent report.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit temporarily blocked the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) just two days before it was set to go into effect. The federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to continue administering the previously promulgated Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) until a final decision can be made on the merits of the rule, likely this summer or fall.

Indonesian state-owned utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) formally launched operations at three new coal-fired power plants on Dec. 28.

Columbia Research Laboratories’s Model VM-300 is a general purpose vibration measuring instrument designed for periodic routine checks of industrial equipment where portability and ease of use are required. Acceleration, velocity, and displacement measurement modes are provided, along with a number of value-enhancing features. Dual power allows the VM-300 to be powered from its internal battery […]

A failed electrical insulator at a switchyard at Exelon Generation Co.’s two-unit Byron nuclear plant in Lisle, Ill., has been blamed for the loss of offsite power on Monday morning that automatically shut down Unit 2 and forced Exelon to declare an “Unusual Event.”

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 […]

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.

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.

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 […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., January 18, 2012 – In denying TransCanada’s permit for the Keystone XL pipeline to move oil from Alberta’s tar sands projects to U.S. refineries, the Obama administration has stepped directly into a Republican political trap. Given how savvy the Obama folks are about these sorts of events, I confess I’m […]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week released, for the first time, data collected under its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reporting Program. The data set shows that in 2010, power plants were the largest direct emitters of GHGs, followed by petroleum refineries. The database was released as the agency continues work on GHG standards for new and modified power plants, which may be released by the end of this month.