POWER

An updated HydroSwage Tube Expansion System featuring new ease-of-use and data collection features is being offered by Haskel International. The compact Mark V system provides high accuracy, speed, and repeatability by expanding heat exchanger tubes into tube sheets through the direct application of high internal hydraulic pressure. It is designed for use in fabricating heat […]

Energy efficient and environmentally responsible dry bottom ash technologies will soon be required by regulation. Progressive companies will bring their plants into compliance early because it’s a good business strategy. Here are your compliance options.

Renewable energy advocates hailed recent poll results as unquestionably demonstrating the public’s support of renewable energy resources. However, answers to follow-up questions showed that the public’s willingness to pay for increased renewable energy is lukewarm at best.

The forecast is looking sunny for the 25-MW DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center, which has more than 90,000 photovoltaic (PV) panels and is the largest solar PV plant in the U.S. Completed in October 2009, it is a sustainable energy solution with minimal maintenance costs. The site uses no fuel, consumes no cooling water, has no air emissions, and creates no waste products.

German company MWM introduced the new MWM container, which it says is a highly efficient and economic distributed generation system designed for natural gas and biogas applications. The package, which includes a biogas genset, a standard container, and biogas processing, are aligned with special requirements of biogas operation. For example, it uses specially designed exhaust […]

Denmark put into operation its 12th offshore wind farm this October. The €440 million Rødsand 2 wind farm, a 90-turbine installation with a nameplate capacity of 207 MW, was erected for owner E.ON by Siemens Energy—both German firms—over a mere 122 days. The wind farm joins Rødsand I, a 72-turbine installation that began operating nearby in the Baltic Sea in 2003.

At Malaysia’s first waste-to-energy plant, municipal solid waste (MSW) is converted into refuse-derived fuel for use in an integrated steam power plant. This facility was designed to achieve the twin objectives of environmentally friendly MSW disposal and generating renewable power.

Energy is the most regulated sector of the American economy, making public-private partnerships essential to scaling the solar industry. Such partnerships have helped other energy sectors to reach scale over the past hundred years.

A 14-MW pilot plant built by energy firm ELCOGAS at its 335-MW integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) facility at Puertollano in Spain in September captured its first metric ton of carbon dioxide. Now the company plans to begin tests to procure more technical and economic information about carbon capture and storage (CCS), including how efficient it is to co-produce hydrogen and power with carbon capture processes.

Located in the heavily forested country of Finland, the Kaukaan Voima biomass-fueled power plant produces process steam and electricity for UPM’s Kaukas pulp and paper mill as well as electricity and district heating for Lappeenrannan Energia, a city-owned power company. Launched in 2009, the plant can provide 125 MW of electricity, 110 MWth of district heat, and 150 MWth of process steam thanks to one of the world’s largest wood-fired fluidized bed boilers.

Economic and environmental developments markedly affected electricity markets in 2009, driving generation down 4.1% to 3,950 million MWh from 4,119 million MWh in 2008—the lowest level since 2003 and the largest decline in six decades, the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) said in its recently released “Electric Power Annual” report.

Turkey, a country that has seen rapid economic growth since the 1980s, largely spurred by a shift in governmental strategy to open up markets and increase private participation, has been actively overhauling its power infrastructure to meet soaring electricity consumption. According to grid operator Turkish Electricity Transmission Co., national consumption increased to 17 billion kWh this September—an 11% increase over the 15.3 billion kWh consumed in September 2009.

In September, the 300-MW Thanet Offshore Wind Farm, the world’s largest offshore wind energy facility, began operation off the southeastern coast of England. The wind farm has 100 3-MW turbines manufactured by Vestas. The facility will generate electricity equivalent to the annual consumption of more than 200,000 British households.

The Illinois House on Tuesday approved plans to build Tenaska’s $3.5 billion proposed integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Taylorville, Ill. The state Senate is expected to vote on the 602-MW plant later today.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have a created a set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into power, and which can repeatedly be broken down and reassembled by adding or removing solution. The scientific breakthrough—inspired by a natural process used by plants to renew light-capturing molecules that have been degraded by the sun—could mean that researchers are closer to creating a self-healing photovoltaic (PV) technology that can keep repairing itself to avoid loss in performance.

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In a long-term energy plan released last week, Ontario’s government reiterated its commitment to phase out coal power in the province by 2014 while increasing nuclear capacity.

A 9.5-MW gas engine unveiled by GE this October for decentralized, independent power producers in remote, hot, or high-altitude regions features a 48.7% electrical efficiency and promises to reduce lifecycle costs by lowering fuel consumption.

The destruction of the turbines and auxiliary equipment at Russia’s Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydro Power Plant in August 2009 claimed the lives of 75 workers and wrecked an indispensable source of electricity that will take years to fully restore. The disaster, as this report explains, was predictable and preventable.

India’s Union Ministry of Environments and Forests on Tuesday granted environmental clearance to a 9,900-MW nuclear power plant proposed for construction by state-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd. (NPCIL) in collaboration with French firm AREVA.

The UK government in late October shelved plans to build the Severn barrage—a project that would have involved building a 10-mile dam across the mouth of the Severn River—after a two-year-long feasibility study failed to convince ministers to use public funds to build it. The Department of Energy and Climate Change instead gave its long-awaited approval to eight sites for new nuclear reactors, saying that private companies could begin building the country’s new fleet of reactors, provided no public subsidy is involved.

As wind and solar energy capacity in the U.S. continues to grow, compressed air energy storage (CAES) and other bulk energy storage technologies will increasingly be used to help balance electrical supply and demand.

A 1,650-MW EPR reactor under construction in Finland will begin operation during the latter half of 2013, AREVA said in a press release last week, denying rumors that the project had been delayed again.

Dubai-based energy firm Rubenius in October proposed to build a $4 billion energy storage facility based on sodium sulfur (NaS) technology on a 345-acre site in the Mexican state of Baja California, close to the U.S. border. If it comes to fruition, the facility—dubbed a “mega region energy warehouse” by Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon—will feature 1,000 MW of battery storage and offer “storage space” to energy companies and utilities in both Mexico and the U.S.

Composite materials are ideal for producing wind turbine blades because of their strength, light weight, and ability to be tailored to provide the precise mechanical properties needed for any blade design. Now, best practices originally developed for rotorcraft blade manufacturing can be applied to designing and manufacturing wind turbine blades that are constructed from composites.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s proposal to extend the operational lifespan of the country’s 17 nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years was passed in Germany’s Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, on Friday.

As the United States grapples with how best to address climate change and conservation—whether by taxing carbon, cap and trade, or setting higher renewable portfolio standards—an effective approach exists at the state level to reduce electricity producers’ carbon emissions: restructuring.

Experts have decried congressional and academic reliance on a mathematical model for understanding complex systems that suggests an attack on a small part of the U.S. power grid could disrupt the entire power system network.

Recent mandates require government facilities to develop energy policies that enable energy conservation, increase the use of renewable energy, and improve energy security. Utilities with government facilities in their service territory may have opportunities to develop solar and other renewable energy projects that help them meet state renewable portfolio standards while increasing a government facility’s usage of renewable energy. The key to such a win-win proposition is careful structuring of the project agreement to leverage each party’s assets.

On November 8, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued its decision in West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, et al. v. Huffman. It’s an opinion that should be of great interest to government agencies and others who find themselves in a position of seeking to remediate water quality problems left by third parties.