The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month approved Constellation Energy’s $1.1 billion acquisition of BostonGen’s five power plants in the Boston area, which have a combined capacity of 2,950 MW. The approval marks closing of the sale of the third-largest generating portfolio in the New England region.

Although it doesn’t get much attention, the world’s first and largest source of renewable electricity, water power, is still a major player on the world stage. Though viewed as politically incorrect by some folks, mostly in the developed world, and despite its well-known environmental impacts, using water to turn turbines to generate electricity represents an attractive way to generate electricity with no fuel costs, even in the U.S. Here’s what’s being talked about in the U.S., India, Turkey, Nigeria, and China.

Whatever happened to the venerable military institution of KP? It’s been outsourced, along with a lot of other tasks in the work environment. Outsourcing often makes sense, but it isn’t a panacea.

Despite high-powered congressional legislation in 2005, the U.S. is still unable to site high-voltage interstate transmission lines in a timely fashion. Two new reports suggest ways out of the gridlock.

Uranium remains plentiful around the world, says a new resource study from MIT, obviating the need to "close" the nuclear fuel cycle by reprocessing and developing breeder reactors.

Given cloud computing’s potential to lower operating costs and increase flexibility, it’s no wonder that it is on the cusp of sending the corporate world into a paradigm shift.

The process of banking allowances under the existing schemes for creating markets for pollution reductions has created a set of difficult problems as those programs have changed, wiping out significant value from the allowances.

As mergers and acquisitions in the power sector heat up again, questions arise about how employee benefits are affected by these complex business deals.

A million possibilities and distractions are in the business environment. Tom Hall and Wally Bock, authors of the new book Ruthless Focus, say the companies that win in the long term are the ones that can drown out the background noise and keep dancing with the strategy that brought them to the party.

With climate legislation dead in the U.S., it is worthwhile to take a look at how discussions of energy and environmental policy ebb and flow in the country, generally without reaching serious resolution.

A key challenge for new leaders is to make a transition from actually doing the work to making sure that the work gets done. That takes a mind shift.

Moyno Inc. launched its Moyno 2000 Progressing Cavity Pump with a unique gear joint that allows the versatile pump to handle a wide range of applications, from shear-sensitive chemicals to difficult-to-process slurries and sludges. The crowned gear universal joint drive train configuration provides exceptional torque and thrust control, and the patented joint seals effectively protect […]

It’s been almost three years since the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued its decision vacating the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Revision Rule and the Clean Air Mercury Rule. Since then, the utility industry has been in a holding pattern with respect to the control of hazardous air pollutant (HAP) emissions.

Timothy Curran, head of power for Alstom Power, USA, recently shared his company’s view of 2011 and beyond with POWER’s editor-in-chief.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has identified four breakthrough technologies and funded them through its Strategic Research and Development Portfolio. EPRI expects to accelerate development of these innovations because they are likely to have significant effects on how electricity is generated and delivered.

It’s time to pull my crystal ball out of storage, polish it up, and give you another round of U.S. industry predictions for 2011. I graded last year’s predictions B+ (for a complete rundown of how I graded each prediction, see page 32), but I’m convinced I’ll do better in 2011.

Though electricity generation has entered a key period of transition—as investment shifts to low-carbon technologies—world electricity demand is set to grow faster than any other “final form of energy,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its latest annual World Energy Outlook.

China in mid-November embarked upon building the first massive hydropower project in Tibet, a 6 x 85-MW plant straddling the middle reaches of the mighty Yarlung Tsangpo River (Figure 2). According to the Hunan Daily, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, Sinohydro began damming the river in Shannan Prefecture, Tibet, on Nov. 8, kicking off the 7.9 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) “run of the river” project that is estimated to generate electricity for the surrounding region by 2014.

Paul Browning, vice president, thermal products for GE Power & Water, sees the greatest short-term business opportunities beyond the U.S., in “high-speed” countries.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has begun converting a combined-cycle plant in Japan to prepare for verification testing of its long-anticipated J-Series gas turbine in February 2011—a system that the company claims has the most power generation capacity and highest thermal efficiency in the 1,600C turbine inlet temperature class (Figure 3). The work being carried out at the Takasago Machinery Works facility in Hyogo Prefecture (where the company’s G-Series gas turbines were tested) includes installation of the J-Series turbine, and it marks another major milestone in the technology’s development.

Utilities have achieved success by supplying electricity from central station plants (the supply side) to a grid that carries electricity to customers (the demand side). One way to improve the efficiency of this supply chain is by adopting smart grid technology. The weak link in that chain is convincing customers to use, and regulators to invest in, the smart grid.

TransCanada Corp. on Oct. 28 officially opened its C$700 million Halton Hills Generating Station. The 683-MW 2 x 1 combined-cycle plant on a greenfield site in Ontario (Figure 5) will operate under a 20-year power purchase agreement with the Ontario Power Authority (OPA). Construction of the peaker plant started in December 2007 and was completed on time and on budget, TransCanada said.

Bill Newsom—vice president, sales & marketing, Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas Inc.—talks about taking the long view with the company’s U.S. investments.

The concept of a smart grid may have been born in the U.S.A., but it’s hitting an adolescent growth spurt just about everywhere else first. Meanwhile, in the U.S., both the regulators and companies that see great potential in a smarter grid are realizing that making substantial smart grid progress will first require making both people and policies smarter. There’s one exception, one piece of the smart grid, that could face fewer obstacles to adoption, and that’s because it offers more obvious and visible benefits to its users: electric vehicles (EVs).

In all of these cases, frequent oil analysis monitoring and preestablished action plans were able to allow for transformer replacement before the occurrence of a catastrophic failure. Exelon’s experience, as well as that of other power utilities across the grid, has spawned a report by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) of Atlanta, Georgia, that recommends that performance monitoring and trending be applied to all large transformers in order to establish a baseline for transformer maintenance strategies.

TANE and Shaw to Provide EPC Services for South Texas Expansion. Nuclear Innovation North America LLC (NINA), the nuclear development company jointly owned by NRG Energy and Toshiba Corp., on Nov. 29 announced that it awarded the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for South Texas Projects Units 3 and 4 to a restructured EPC […]

Sudden bumps and shocks are great fun when you are off-roading or are riding on a rollercoaster. But when you are operating a piece of equipment, you want it to be running as smoothly as a Cadillac rolling down the interstate. Sudden changes in pressure produce vibration, cavitation, and water hammer and generally lower the lifespan and reliability of fluid systems.

European carbon trading is gradually pushing down coal-fired capacity factors, and operating costs are rising. The U.S. may not have a carbon market, but increasing regulatory requirements are having the same effect on coal-fired generation capacity factors and operating costs. In the meantime, gas-fired assets are enjoying increased usage and lower unit costs.

Researchers at Germany’s Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) claim to have developed a small-scale hydroelectric power plant that is capable of operating profitably even at modest dam heights while minimizing impact on waterways.

In November, California voters overwhelmingly rejected an initiative that would have put the brakes on AB 32, the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction law. Given the role that California has played in climate change policy, that such a vote took place only four years into the law’s implementation process and 10 years before the emissions reduction targets were to be met was a reality check on climate change policy for those on both sides of the issue.