One of the world’s first breakwater wave power stations was commissioned this July by Ente Vasco de Energia (EVE), an energy agency in the northern Basque region of Spain. The €2.3 million ($3.3 million) project in Mutriku uses oscillating water column technology developed by Voith Hydro’s Wavegen, based in Inverness, Scotland. The technology is integrated into a concrete power station built on a breakwater or coastal protection project.

Moyno introduced the Moyno 2000 WA and WB close-coupled pumps designed for lower-pressure, lower-flow applications that do not require the full features and benefits of the Moyno 2000 GI pump. The Moyno 2000 WA (shown here) and WB models are ideal for municipal and industrial applications that require the transfer of highly viscous fluids and […]

As it does for sectors such as global defense and transportation, nanotube technology holds great promise for the energy sector—and, in particular, for power generation. This July, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said carbon nanotubes showed potential as an innovative approach to storing solar energy, and Rice University scientists claimed they were closer to developing a unique wire that could transmit power with few losses.

Cat Pumps launched a new series of glycol pumps developed to supply triethylene glycol for natural gas dehydration systems. System reliability, especially of the pump, is essential to minimize production interruptions and costly equipment failures. The TEG triglycol pumps have been field-proven in the most rigorous dehydration systems, Cat Pumps says. The electric engine–driven TEG […]

What the summer heat wave, and one utility’s less-than-stellar response, teaches us about communicating with customers.

Australia Pursues Carbon Tax. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard on July 10 laid out an ambitious plan to cut national greenhouse gas emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 by imposing a A$23 (US$23.4) per metric ton carbon tax, starting next year. If parliament approves the plan before year-end, the carbon tax will increase […]

Air Liquide America Specialty Gases equipment group recently announced the introduction of a comprehensive line of “industrial grade” equipment for use with gases commonly used in welding, cutting, and other industrial applications, as well as with liquid cryogenics. The equipment is ideally suited for use with Air Liquide brands of industrial gases such as ALIGAL, […]

While the vast power of one form of energy below Earth’s crust (tectonic plate shifts) doomed the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan last March, using another form—heat and steam—is getting renewed attention in the wake of the Japanese meltdown.

Now that many flue gas desulfurization (FGD) systems are reaching middle age, corrosion repairs of structural and process vessels are becoming more common. Corrosion is caused by condensates of acids formed during the FGD process, which accelerate pitting and crevice corrosion, particularly in scrubbers where high sulfate solutions are present. Scrubbers lined with 2205 duplex stainless steel are among the most vulnerable to pit or crevice corrosion, from both chlorides and fluorides.

It is fair to say that 2011 is bringing some uncertainty into the nuclear energy industry. The tsunami and subsequent events at Fukushima present Japan and our industry with new challenges but also serve as a catalyst for continuous improvement. In the U.S., we are learning from these events and improving our operations, designs, and emergency response approaches to make our plants safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly.

What’s on the agenda for the utility industry today and into the future? Platts and Capgemini asked the industry leadership in their latest survey. The answers revolve around regulation, finance, and human resources.

When adding, modifying, or upgrading a system, many critical infrastructures conduct a factory acceptance test (FAT). A FAT includes a customized testing procedure for systems and is completed before the final installation at the critical facility. Because it is difficult to predict the correct operation of the safety instrumented system or consequences due to failures in some parts of the system, a FAT provides a valuable check of these safety issues. Similarly, because cyber security can also impact the safety of critical systems if a system is compromised, it makes sense to integrate cyber security with the FAT.

Uncertainty about China’s role in world trade and its current monopoly over critical rare earth minerals continues to roil supply chains in energy technology markets. Will the World Trade Organization bring China into the fold, or will China ignore the international forum that it lobbied hard to join several years ago?

From the East Coast to the Lone Star State, a number of elected officials and power industry representatives are bashing the new aggressive regulation aimed at controlling specific power plant emissions. Complying with a federal court mandate, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) on July 6. The new […]

The process of handling employee complaints of workplace discrimination or harassment is filled with potentially disastrous pitfalls. Here are some things to avoid.

In 2010, the 2,310-MW Adapazari Power Plant achieved 99.8% availability, which is nearly 7% higher than the industry average and a global record in F-class gas turbine technology. The new turbine upgrade is helping ENKA Power bolster Turkey’s evolving economy by improving its energy sector’s efficiency and productivity.

Employee training is one of the most important human resource functions, and one of the most difficult to manage. But there are some proven ideas to help guide training programs in the work environment.

Known for its progressive, pro-sustainability policies, the City of Tallahassee recently repowered a 30-year-old conventional steam plant unit, turning it into a new 300-MW facility. The utility redesigned the Arvah B. Hopkins Generating Station, Unit 2 as a 1 × 1 combined cycle plant in order to improve efficiency, switched the primary fuel from oil to natural gas, and thereby reduced fuel costs and emissions. The plant’s flexible design even will enable expansion to a 2 × 1 configuration when additional capacity is needed in the future.

"Asset health" offers a conceptual path to integrating information technology with operations technology, thereby overcoming the common management problem of "siloed data," according to a recent study by The McDonnell Group.

Utilities are scrambling to reconnect nearly two million customers in 14 East Coast states who have been without power for three or four consecutive days since Hurricane Irene pummeled the region.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has sent a more proficient inspection team to Dominion’s quake-hit North Anna nuclear power plant in Mineral, Va., to further investigate effects of the Aug. 23 5.8-magnitude quake whose epicenter was only five miles away from the twin-reactor station in Mineral, Va., after Dominion told the NRC that initial reviews determined the ground motion resulting from the quake may have exceeded the plant’s design basis.

On Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved changes to emergency preparedness regulations affecting existing nuclear power plants, those that might be licensed and built in the future, and research and test reactors.

The City of Alexandria, Va., and Houston-based GenOn on Monday agreed to shutter the company’s 482-MW coal-fired Potomac Generating Station (PRGS) by Oct. 2012. Community groups had fiercely opposed the 1949-built plant’s continued operation, citing concerns about its age and emitted pollution, but the plant has been seen as a key facility that maintains reliability for Washington, D.C.

Rural electric cooperative utilities in 14 states will receive up to $900 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Rural Development’s Rural Utilities Service to help them upgrade, expand, maintain, and replace power infrastructure in rural areas of the U.S. The funding, announced on Monday, is expected to support construction of nearly 1,500 miles of line and improve 1,700 miles of existing line.

Germany will not rely on reserve power from any of the seven nuclear power plants (with a total capacity of about 8,800 MW) that it shut down in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis for this and the following winter, the country’s energy regulator said today.

The Department of Energy on Friday finalized a partial guarantee for a $852 million loan to support development of the Genesis Solar Project—a 250-MW parabolic trough concentrating solar (CSP) facility located on federal land in Riverside County, Calif., that is expected to increase the nation’s currently installed CSP capacity by about 50%.

Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda could push for use of existing nuclear reactors in Japan for a longer period than advocated by outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) last week approved a transmission line on public lands that will connect a 250-MW solar power project to the grid in California. The line will connect to the Imperial Solar Energy Center West Project in Imperial County.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., August 25, 2011 — A year ago, a peer-reviewed report in Science magazine concluded that a warmer planet over the past decade has led to drought that has reduced plant production and threatened worldwide food security. Today, a new, peer-reviewed study in the same journal argues that the results in […]

CERN CLOUD Experiment Challenges Climate Models By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., August 25, 2011 — The long-anticipated CERN study of the impact of cosmic rays on formation of clouds in the atmosphere, published today in Nature, should prompt a major revision of the global circulation models that support claims of man-made climate warming. The CLOUD […]