POWER

SunPower has introduced the SunPower C7 Tracker, a solar photovoltaic (PV) tracking system that concentrates the sun’s power seven times to achieve what the company claims could be “the lowest levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility-scale solar power plants available today.” The C7 Tracker combines single-axis tracking technology with rows of parabolic mirrors, reflecting […]

Measuring the level of dust and fly ash collected in electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) is a very difficult technical problem. At one utility, level switches were so unreliable that operators could not trust their readings because failures were so frequent. When a switch did fail, the precipitator would often clog up, costing the utility up to $100,000 in downtime and repair costs.

Columbia Research Laboratories has introduced the Model VM-300 vibration meter, 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 […]

Friends, colleagues, and co-workers uniformly called him "The Boss." His life was a story of failure after failure. His greatest fame was his greatest failure—a journey begun nearly 100 years ago, in 1914, to cross the desolate Antarctic continent by land. His doughty ship Endurance became trapped by the encroaching ice in the Weddell Sea north of the continent, isolating Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 27-man crew.

Over the past 11 years, the Powder River Basin Coal Users’ Group (PRBCUG) has grown to become the voice of North American generating companies that are dedicated to the safe and efficient use of PRB coal. POWER, the group’s media sponsor, has reported on the PRBCUG’s annual meetings, which are colocated with the ELECTRIC POWER Conference & Exhibition each year. POWER also reports annually on the group’s coal plant of the year award. For 2011, in the large plant category the award went to Kansas City Power & Light’s Iatan Unit 2 (see our August 2011 issue); the small plant category winner, Muscatine Power & Water, is profiled in this issue, beginning on page 56.

There is a fine line between personnel management and intruding into the personal lives of employees. Staying on the right side of that line is challenging, particularly when prior legal decision are mixed.

The 2011 Marmaduke Award winner was CTG Universidad, a two-unit combustion turbine plant built in the early 1970s in Monterrey, Mexico. The award was made to the plant in recognition of its upgrade of one 14-MW unit to operate as a synchronous condenser, thus relaxing power restrictions caused by a lack of sufficient reactive power production in the north of the city. More reactive power production by this urban plant also allows delivery of more power produced by efficient combined cycle plants located outside the city, because it reduces the amount of reactive power that must be moved over transmission lines.

As the resource gets increased and more sophisticated scrutiny, natural gas from shale looks increasingly like a revolutionary force in energy markets. Most recently, the Washington-based environmental and energy think tank Resources for the Future rolled out a serious analysis of the new method of developing gas, and the issues it presents. The preliminary results look very positive for gas.

In “Siemens Releases ‘ShapingPower’ Option for Renewables Integration” (December 2011), the Figure 3 callouts for wind and solar were reversed. POWER regrets the error. A corrected version can be found in the online version of the article. â– 

For power providers, grid stabilization has been a rising concern in recent years, especially because of the increasing use of intermittent energy sources such as wind turbines. Maintaining a stable electricity grid is difficult because of the unpredictability of intermittent energy sources. If wind turbines, for example, are supplying 5% of the overall power for the grid and the turbines stop moving because the air grows still, the grid has to find a way to kick into overdrive to compensate for this sudden decrease in energy. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

In discussing implementation by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) of California’s new renewable energy law, CPUC Commissioner Timothy Alan Simon urged consideration of the economic, technical, and political consequences of the CPUC’s actions: “Renewable energy is a fuel source—it’s not a religion.” The promotion of renewable energy remains critical, but as Commissioner Simon admonishes, […]

Gas turbines are expensive. Although peaking units aren’t as costly as baseload units, letting them sit idle is still a waste. Yet that is what peaking units spend nearly all their time doing. Some operators only fire up their units a few days a year. That is like putting money in the bank and collecting interest a few hours at a time, rather than all year round. That strategy only works when the payback is extremely high for those short periods.

U.S. optimism has been restored by reports of abundant, reasonably priced natural gas to fuel most new generation; however, huge gaps in the fuel delivery system (thousands of miles of pipelines are needed) will soon challenge gas plant development. Meanwhile, the cloud of sovereign debt hangs over all major capital projects in Europe, where the UK moves ahead with new nuclear projects while many of its neighbors shut the door on nuclear and struggle to finance their commitment to renewables.

As demonstrated by last fall’s unexpected snowfall in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, and the ensuing lengthy outages and public outrage, crisis communications is a hot topic for power utilities. And in addressing that topic, the role of social media is getting attention as a tool for disaster management.

The technologies used to generate and distribute electricity will be radically transformed during the coming decade. Amid that change, the power industry must continue to meet customer reliability, safety, and cost-of-service expectations. Achieving the right balance among these often-conflicting goals is the primary focus of every utility. The Electric Power Research Institute is helping utilities achieve that balance with R&D programs for many new and emerging technologies.

Welcome to "Workplace Drama," a new, regular MANAGING POWER column by noted communications and human resources expert Marlene Chism. Her column will appear in each issue, and as the column progresses, we hope to hear from you with real-world situations and questions, to which Marlene will respond.

Reaching a major milestone, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday granted a final Design Certification Amendment to Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor design, paving the way for utilities in the U.S. to build nuclear plants using the third-generation reactor design.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) issuance of its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)—a rule that will mandate all coal- and oil-fired power generating units limit emissions of heavy metals and acid gases using “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT)—last week provoked a range of reactions, including renewed concerns about its costs and impact on grid reliability.

In a key settlement that will resolve all environmentally based legal challenges against its 600-MW ultrasupercritical John W. Turk Jr. power plant under construction near Texarkana, Ark., Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) on Thursday agreed to several conditions, including phasing out a 528-MW coal-fired unit in Texas, building 400 MW of renewable power, and limiting new transmission lines in natural areas.

Exelon Corp. and Constellation Energy Group must sell three electricity generating plants in Maryland before the companies can proceed with their proposed $7.9 billion merger to level competition for wholesale electricity in the mid-Atlantic region, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said last week.

A report released on Thursday by the Department of Energy (DOE) examining the role that rare earth metals play in the manufacture of wind turbines, electric vehicles, and photovoltaic (PV) thin-film solar cells finds that these clean energy technologies may see supply disruptions for five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium, and yttrium) in the short term, though risks will generally decrease in the medium and long term.

A supplement to “The Big Picture: Gas Taxes” in our January 2012 issue.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., December 21, 2011 – Call it “The Little Breeder that Could.” Sixty years ago – December 21, 1951 – on the remote, high Idaho desert near Arco, legendary atomic scientist Walter Zinn from the Atomic Energy Commission’s Argonne lab outside Chicago, overseeing the Idaho project, wrote in his log book, […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) stunned officials of Duke Energy and Progress Energy on Thursday when it refused to unconditionally approve a $13.7 billion merger deal of the two companies that would have created the largest U.S. electric utility. The regulatory body cited concerns about the merger’s impact on power markets in North and South Carolina—where both companies are based—for its decision.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today 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. The regulation has been called the “most expensive order” aimed at companies that has been considered by the Obama administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week issued a final rule amending its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) to include five more states in the ozone season nitrogen oxide (NOx) program. The final rule adds Oklahoma to the CSAPR program (for its ozone-season NOx emissions only), bringing the total number of states covered by the rule to 28.

Nine months after the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 quake and an ensuing massive tsunami that plunged it into the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, 25 years earlier, Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, on Friday said in a televised address that the plant’s four afflicted units have been brought to a state of cold shutdown. However, the crisis is far from over, he said.

A report was released last week by the European Commission that outlines possible ways European Union (EU) members can ensure energy security and competitiveness while meeting an ambitious goal of reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Duke-American Transmission Co. (DATC) will take charge of the design and development of a proposed 950-mile 500-kV transmission line that would deliver wind energy generated in eastern Wyoming to California and the southwestern U.S.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., December 15, 2011 – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday gave a big lump of holiday coal to Duke Energy and Progress Energy, putting the colossal Carolina utility merger on hold pending an improved plan to mitigate market power. It isn’t clear whether FERC’s latest skepticism about the merger will […]