POWER

Chill out, relax, enjoy the ride, and take the real road to success. It’s the journey that counts and you can’t get to the end of the road without traveling along it.

Like its neighbor to the south, Canada faces enormous costs to upgrade and expand its transmission and distribution system. The desire to integrate more renewable power into the grid, build a smarter grid, and export more power are providing the rationale for action, but capital and political will lag behind.

Parker Hannifin Corp. has assembled a comprehensive and complementary package of heavy duty hand-operated tube fabrication tools for small-bore tube assembly. Parker’s new tube fabrication equipment package provides all the equipment necessary to successfully install tube fittings—both CP and A-LOK—in various system applications. Available for a broad spectrum of instrumentation tubing sizes, the tools include […]

In Canada, as in the U.S., where you live determines the type of generation technology that provides your power. Here’s how the four most energy-intensive provinces in Canada are responding to the challenge of providing reliable and cheap power in a sustainable way.

Fluke introduced a new family of clamp meters that is engineered to give electricians and maintenance technicians new ways to ways to work safely and reduce their exposure to electrical shock. The new Fluke 381 (shown here), 376, 375, and 374 current clamps and iFlex current probes are rated for use in measurement category IV […]

In his January State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass legislation that would allow the U.S. to source 80% of its electricity from “clean energy” sources by 2035—including traditional renewable sources like wind and solar as well as nuclear and “clean coal.” That broadened definition of “clean energy” was designed to inspire bipartisan interest, as was widely reported. But, as was also widely pointed out, the speech followed a visit to Washington from Chinese government officials and a series of key agreements aimed at increasing “clean energy” cooperation between the two countries.

New methods of reliability, availability, and maintainability (RAM) evaluation help facilitate more-accurate plant output and revenue predictions, identify strengths and weaknesses of possible plant configurations, and determine potential improvements and enhancements for integrated gasification combined cycle plants.

Prior to the crash, the renewable energy industry—including wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources—was on a roll. In 2007 and 2008, the U.S. wind power sector alone added over 13,500 MW of new projects, enough to power almost 4 million homes.

France in January announced its contribution to the wave of small and modular reactors (SMRs): a submarine-like nuclear plant that can be submerged in waters 60 meters (m) to 100 m deep and several kilometers offshore.

Steam turbines convert the thermal energy in motive steam to rotating mechanical energy, and the generator converts that energy into electrical power. One important requirement for safe and reliable operation is preventing water induction in the steam turbine and avoiding water hammer in the steam piping system. ASME standards present the design guidelines for removing moisture from steam lines; this article explains a practical design process.

Brazil’s environment agency, IBAMA, in January issued a partial installation license that allows for construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam complex, an 11,233-MW project estimated to cost some 19.6 billion reals (US$11.7 billion), to begin on the margins of the Amazon’s Xingu River. Saying the project is needed to meet soaring electricity demand when completed, as planned in 2015, the government gave license to dam-building consortium Norte Energia to begin clearing 238.1 hectares (588 acres) of forestland.

Europe installed 308 new offshore wind turbines in 2010—a 51% increase in installed offshore capacity over the previous year, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) said in new figures released this January. The 883 MW of new capacity—worth some €2.6 billion—were installed at nine wind farms in five countries, bringing the continent’s total offshore installed wind capacity to 2,964 MW.

At the beginning of 2011, German firm E.ON began operation of its new 417-MW Malzenice gas and steam turbine power station in Slovakia’s Trnava region, near the country’s capital, Bratislava (Figure 5). The facility, which is expected to generate more than 300 billion kWh annually, boasts an efficiency of 58%—which E.ON claims is among the “highest in Europe.”

A new article in Bioscience looks again at the connection between economic growth and energy demand, shedding little light on the subject and further demonstrating the limits of neo-Malthusianism. Of course there is a relationship between energy and economic growth, but what is it? No answers here; only a doomsday prediction.

Lab-scale experiments have shown that seawater and calcium could effectively remove most of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) from a natural gas power plant’s flue gas stream. A large fraction of the captured gas could then be converted into dissolved calcium bicarbonate—which, pumped into the sea, could be beneficial to the ocean’s marine life, says a researcher representing both the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) Carbon Management Program and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The long-struggling uranium business, hoping that demand for nuclear fuel will increase, is slowly stretching its muscles and strengthening exploration and production efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere.

GDF SUEZ, RWE, and Iberdrola Pull out of Cernavoda Nuclear Expansion. French power company GDF SUEZ, Germany’s RWE, and Spain’s Iberdrola on Jan. 20 said they would no longer participate in a project to build Units 3 and 4 of the Cernavoda nuclear project in Romania. The companies cited “economic and market uncertainties surrounding the […]

The winter of 2010-2011 has been a cold one for financing renewable energy projects. That’s the weather report from a recent project financing meeting in New Orleans, a survey of developers and builders done by a large Minnesota construction company, and accounts from those in the financial trenches.

The popular television show Mythbusters uses pseudo-scientific means to examine and often expose as fiction familiar urban myths. After made-for-television lab tests, the myth is then classified as either a fabrication (“busted”), entirely possible (“confirmed”), or somewhere in between (“plausible”).

In the past, members of a utility’s engineering staff spent their career designing and building new power plants. Today, many utility engineers find that opportunity comes around only once in a career. To fill the experience gap, an “owner’s engineer” company can add to a utility’s team a cadre of highly qualified power engineers who focus on avoiding design errors and keeping the project on schedule.

Don’t get fixated on the Environmental Protection Agency’s moves against carbon dioxide. The real action is in the area of conventional air pollutants.

Thule (“Two Lee”) Air Base is a 254–square mile base located in a coastal valley in the northwestern corner of Greenland, within the Arctic Circle. The base, the U.S.’s northernmost military installation, is nestled between mountains and surrounded by icebergs and glaciers as far as the eye can see.

How does your company prepare and share fossil plant performance data? What data are important, and how much effort is required to collect and report the data? What are the most important statistics for reporting key fossil plant operations? The latest EUCG benchmarking survey reveals the favored fossil performance metrics at several of the largest utilities in eight key categories.

While the cybersecurity threat escalates asymmetrically, federal agencies may be shortchanging cybersecurity while developing smart grid standards designed to protect the emerging smart grid from attack.

Beginning each spring and continuing through the fall, backpressure readings at Rosebud Operating Services Inc. indicated substantial drops in the condenser’s efficiency. Increased backpressure results in higher net plant heat rate and a corresponding measurable decrease in power generation.

As U.S. electric utilities watch increasing numbers of older workers leave the workforce, they are left with a shrinking pool of experienced personnel. To meet this growing challenge, a number of educational programs are being offered to help younger workers take advantage of career opportunities in the electric power industry.

Critical minerals—such as rare earth metals—are important to many new energy technologies. However, the U.S. Department of Energy is concerned that foreign control of supply, particularly by China, could limit the ability of these technologies to develop fully, so the DOE is developing a strategy to keep the supply chain open. Meanwhile, some analysts say China is playing a losing game with its hold on the minerals.

On January 27, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released a case study examining the causes of a heat exchanger rupture and ammonia release at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Plant in Houston in 2008. Use these lessons learned to check your employee tracking system and to determine whether your plant has installed valves that […]

Scale-manufacturer Scaletron Industries added the Model 2305 Digital Single Cylinder Eco-Scale to its product lineup. Designed to provide a more versatile solution for weighing ammonia, carbon dioxide, hydrogen chloride, liquefied chlorine, sulfur dioxide, and other liquid gases used in water and wastewater treatment applications, the scale can weigh cylinders of up 10.5 inches in diameter and […]

We’ve heard—endlessly, it seems at times—about "peak oil," the idea that the world is rapidly running out of oil and will face catastrophic consequences. Now talk is emerging about "peak coal."