POWER

Continuing the House Republicans’ aggressive attack on Obama administration environmental proposals, a House subcommittee approved legislation in June to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating coal ash as a hazardous waste—one of two options the EPA is considering for tightening coal ash management regulations in response to a disastrous leak from a Tennessee Valley Authority ash impoundment in 2008.

By most estimates, natural gas is likely to become the dominant power generation fuel in the U.S. within perhaps a decade. The rapid growth in natural gas supplies follows advanced drilling techniques that can economically tap large shale gas reserves located deep beneath Earth’s crust. Unfortunately, it only takes one outlaw drilling company to frack it up for the rest of us.

Cycling your steam power plant is inevitable, so now is the time to learn how to minimize equipment damage and assess the true costs of cycling. Whether cycling is required by the grid operator because of renewable integration or other factors, you must be proactive about updating operating processes and upgrade equipment so the transition to cycling operation goes smoothly.

Dominion Virginia Power has asked the Virginia Corporation Commission for approval to convert three aging and relatively small coal-fired plants to biomass, saying the move would provide substantial long-term savings to customers while cutting air emissions and creating hundreds of forest-related and trucking jobs in the state.

According to the International Atomic Energy Commission, deep disposal in stable geological formations is the only sustainable way to safely manage spent fuel and high-level waste (HLW) from nuclear power reactors. No permanent geological repository has yet been built, but some countries have found a location for a future repository. Others are researching the option…

As coal-fired power plants increasingly operate in cycling modes, many plants are confronting the potential for higher levels of component damage and degraded performance of environmental control equipment. Generators and EPRI are working together to find ways to mitigate the effects of cycling operation and to manage the transition of formerly baseload plants to flexible operation.

In a clear sign of growing industry unease about the availability of water for power plant operations, utility officials recently surveyed by Black & Veatch on a host of policy and business issues ranked water supply as their second-highest environmental concern and identified water management as the business issue that could have the greatest impact on the utility industry in the near future.

Energy storage developments got a boost as Beacon Power Corp. in June announced that its first flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, N.Y., achieved its full 20-MW capacity, and AES Energy Storage said its Los Andes battery storage system in Chile had performed continuously for more than 18 months as a critical reserve unit for the nation’s northern grid.

A number of automotive manufacturers, electric utilities, electric power associations, and research groups are working to develop and evaluate technical approaches to integrating plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) into the U.S. electrical grid system. This is a key requirement of facilitating widespread, near-term adoption of PEVs by the American public.

The European Union has adopted a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system as part of its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Beginning January 2012, aircraft flight engines will be added to the emissions sources regulated by the ETS. A Solutions Fellow at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change believes these regulations are an important step in regulating carbon emissions. You be the judge.

Just as GE Energy, Siemens, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in May announced gas combustion technology developments—each seeking to push the 60% barrier with new gas turbine designs—Alstom has quietly been upgrading its KA26 combined cycle power plant. (See the July 2011 “Global Monitor” for more information on the GE, Siemens, and MHI turbines.) The firm says that the next generation of the 500-MW power plant, based on the advanced class GT26 gas turbine, features “achievable” efficiencies of over 61%, increased flexibility, and more than 350 MW, which can be delivered in less than 15 minutes to help integrate renewable energy sources (Figure 3).

Steve Elonka began chronicling the exploits of Marmaduke Surfaceblow—a six-foot-four marine engineer with a steel brush mustache and a foghorn voice—in POWER in 1948, when Marmy raised the wooden mast of the SS Asia Sun with the help of two cobras and a case of Sandpaper Gin. Marmy’s simple solutions to seemingly intractable plant problems remain timeless. This Classic Marmaduke story, published more than 50 years ago, reminds us that an overhaul or startup may not go as planned, but it can still have a happy ending.

Why should utilities consider converting existing coal-fired plants to burn gas? We explore the rationale for fuel switching, some of the options available for the conversion of coal-fired units, technical considerations related to conversion, and some of the financial considerations that will impact the final decision.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., July 30, 2011 — If you want “outside the box” thinking, don’t ask it from those who built the box. That’s the thought that came to mind when I read this week’s draft report from the group of Washington has-beens and hangers-on the Obama administration asked last year to formulate […]

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finalized an order last Thursday that it says reforms its transmission planning and cost allocation requirements “to benefit consumers by enhancing the grid’s ability to support wholesale power markets and ensuring transmission services are provided at just and reasonable rates.”

South Carolina state-owned utility Santee Cooper last week said it had separately signed letters of intent with Duke Energy Carolinas and Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA) to negotiate partnerships in the two new nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station that Santee Cooper is planning with South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday it would not issue a reconsideration of the Bush administration’s ozone standard by the July 29 deadline, but it will finalize the standard “shortly.”

Entergy Corp. on Monday said it would move forward with fabrication of fuel and refueling of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant this October—even though the New Orleans–based company will then be embroiled in a federal court trial against the state of Vermont. The state is determined to shut down the nuclear plant as soon as a Legislature-approved permit expires in March 2012.

Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) on Monday said it has settled a series of lawsuits and other actions brought forth by an assortment of groups opposing construction of the 600-MW John W. Turk., Jr. power plant—the nation’s first ultrasupercritical pulverized coal power plant.

Fourteen of the European Union’s (EU’s) 27 member states that operate nuclear power plants must draw up national programs for the management of spent nuclear fuel—including concrete timetables and cost assessments—and submit them to the European Commission by 2015, at the latest, under a new EU directive adopted last week.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and Montana State University (MSU) said on Tuesday they would begin work on a $67 million, eight-year project that will involve permitting, injecting, and monitoring one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be stored in deep porous rock formations in northern Montana.

Just a month after American Electric Power (AEP) announced it would shut down 6 GW of its coal-fired capacity by 2014 because of new federal emission rules, the Ohio-based utility on Thursday terminated a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy (DOE) and brought a $668 million project to commercialize carbon capture and storage (CCS) to a screeching halt, citing an uncertain U.S. climate policy and the weak economy.

Georgia Power and Georgia’s Public Service Commission (PSC) on Monday agreed, after long negotiations, that the state agency will withdraw a proposed risk-sharing mechanism for the company’s $14 billion two-reactor nuclear expansion at Plant Vogtle, in Waynesboro, Ga., but it will retain the right to strike down costs as “imprudent” even after they have been verified and approved in the established semi-annual cost review process.

Backlash against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) newly finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) mounted in the past week as Texas state agencies, utilities, and regional grid operator the Electric Reliability Council of Texas separately warned that the state could face a generation shortage if the federal pollution rules were implemented as written.

A federal judge on Monday threw out Entergy Corp.’s bid for a preliminary injunction to stop the state of Vermont from shutting down the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in March 2012, when its original 40-year license expires. The ruling will force the company to decide whether it will buy $65 million of nuclear fuel to keep the plant running until a trial begins this September, or to shut down the plant.

Duke Energy’s 862-MW W.C. Beckjord Station southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio, is the latest coal-fired power plant that will be shuttered as a result of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recently proposed Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rule.

Portland General Electric (PGE) and environmental groups on Tuesday reached a consent decree that will resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations at the 585-MW Boardman power plant—Oregon’s only coal-fired plant—by capping sulfur dioxide emissions and phasing out the use of coal by 2020.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week proposed secondary air quality standards for nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), building on rules—like the recently finalized Cross State Air Pollution Rule—to reduce NOx and SOx emissions.

Rentech Inc.’s proposed St. Joe Renewable Energy Center—one of the world’s first biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (BIGCC) projects—last week received a final air permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and will now begin construction of the planned project.

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) on Thursday announced approval of four new renewable projects on public lands, including two utility-scale solar developments in California, a wind energy project in Oregon, and a transmission line in Southern California.