POWER

A new family of Rotating Line Moles (RLM) from NLB gives users more than 40 choices for cleaning pipes and tubes with high-pressure water. Designed for tubes with diameters from 0.5 inch to 1.5 inches (1.27 cm to 3.81 cm), the family features operating pressures of 10,000 psi or 20,000 psi (700 bar or 1,400 […]

When heat exchanger tubes—sometimes numbering a thousand or more per unit—begin to crack or wear, the effects can lead to a cascade of subsequent failures in adjacent tubes. If too many tubes are plugged, heat exchanger effectiveness is compromised, and power generation may be curtailed. If conventional mechanical plugs are used, they can break loose, leak, and fail. At that point, the replacement of a very costly heat exchanger is imminent.

LUDECA has introduced VIBXPERT II, the latest addition to its PRUEFTECHNIK family of portable route-based vibration data collectors. VIBXPERT II is rugged and lightweight and combines the advantages of a rapid processor with an energy-efficient color VGA display. Enhanced with an Fmax of 51KHz and up to 102,400 lines of resolution, all machinery problems can […]

Power plant operators, especially those located in countries with enforceable carbon emissions standards, are concerned about their CO₂ emissions. But for Helsingin Energia—which provides power, heating, and cooling for Helsinki, Finland’s 300,000 residents—the main concern is local warming, not global warming. In Helsinki, temperatures on midsummer afternoons only reach an average 21C, and for half the year daytime temperatures are below 10C.

Heise precision pressure instruments provide the high-accuracy measurements required for critical test, calibration, and process applications. The unique blend of product configurations includes the Heise 0.1% precision dial pressure gauge, the modular PTE-1 handheld calibrator, and high-accuracy digital pressure indicators and transducers. With ranges from 0.25 inches of water to 100,000 psi and accuracies to […]

Stacks at power generating stations may be low maintenance, but they are not no maintenance. The cost of preventing corrosion may be as little as $10,000, but the cost of repair or replacement could be many times that or even put your plant out of commission until the stack problem is corrected.

A proven solution for immediate and long-term job creation came from President Barack Obama and his administration earlier this year: investment in U.S. nuclear energy. Bulldozers in Georgia are already on the move and making preparations for expansion of a nuclear plant that has achieved several approvals, and long-awaited jobs in the skilled labor sector could materialize there within months.

In October of last year, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) issued a study finding that maintaining electric reliability will require significant acceleration in the siting and construction of new transmission lines. The NERC study is indicative of growing concerns that changes to the current transmission planning process are necessary to maintain reliability and accommodate interconnection of the massive amounts of renewable resources expected to come online over the next 10 to 20 years.

Luminant used remnants of the ill-fated Twin Oaks and Forest Grove plants (which were mothballed more than 30 years ago) to build the new two-unit 1,600-MW Oak Grove Plant. Though outfitted with equipment from those old plants, Oak Grove also sports an array of modern air quality control equipment and is the nation’s first 100% lignite-fired plant to adopt selective catalytic reduction for NO_x control and activated carbon sorbent injection technology to remove mercury. For melding two different steam generators into a single project, adopting a unique and efficient “push-pull” fuel delivery system, assembling a tightly integrated team that completed the project on time and within budget, and for completing what was started almost four decades ago, Oak Grove Power Plant is awarded POWER magazine’s 2010 Plant of the Year award.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., July 29, 2010 — More hurdles have arisen for the nascent nuclear renaissance. It now appears that federal loan guarantees for new nukes could turn out to be a dead end, meaning that only two utilities, at most, will get Department of Energy support for new reactors. In passing the […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., July 28, 2010 — Will global warming overwhelm the U.S. with illegal Mexican immigrants? That’s the preposterous claim by three Princeton academicians in an online article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and it has prompted guffaws from among sophisticated readers. In the article – “Linkages among […]

A federal appeals court on Monday reversed a January 2009 ruling by a North Carolina U.S. District Court that had declared emissions from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) coal plants in eastern Tennessee and Alabama a public nuisance in North Carolina and ordered the nation’s largest public power provider to install expensive control technologies. The appeals court said the ruling was “flawed for several reasons.”

The $3.5 billion Taylorville Energy Center (TEC), a proposed integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS), has been awarded a $417 million investment tax credit under a program jointly administered by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Treasury Department. The tax credit is believed to be the largest ever granted to a single project.

PPL Montana will reportedly ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review an order from the Montana Supreme Court that requires it to pay “rent” for use of the riverbeds on which the company’s hydroelectric dams are built.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on Monday legally challenged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) disapproval of the state’s flexible permits program, a system which allows power plants, factories, refineries, and other industrial plants to exceed emission limits in certain areas as long as they stay within overall limits.

Hoosier Energy, an Indiana-based rural cooperative, on Friday reached an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) to resolve alleged New Source Review (NSR) violations of the Clean Air Act.

Tampa Electric said on Monday it is participating in two DOE-funded demonstration projects at the company’s Big Bend and Polk Power Stations. The projects are designed to advance carbon dioxide capture technologies and could lead to the development of technologies on a large scale.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., July 22, 2010 — Is anyone really surprised that Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has finally declared major energy legislation dead? For weeks, Reid has been singing words from a country classic that I’m sure he knew were false: “Mother’s not dead, she’s only sleeping.” Today, he recognized the […]

At least four militants reportedly stormed into a hydropower plant in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region early this morning, shooting dead two security guards before detonating four bombs in a turbine hall and shutting down the plant.

The International Energy Administration (IEA) alleges, based on preliminary data, that China has overtaken the U.S. to become the world’s largest energy user. But China on Tuesday rejected that report, saying the IEA’s data is unreliable. The IEA said that China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent in 2009—4% more than the 2.17 billion […]

A project piloting underground coal gasification (UCG) technology in Australia was last week shut down for tests by the Queensland Government for carcinogenic chemicals in nearby water bores.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) failure to systematically assess development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies renders it unable to gauge their maturity and to provide resources required to move these technologies toward commercial demonstration, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a report released to the public last week.

With only about 13 days remaining before the U.S. Senate’s month-long summer recess is scheduled to begin, concerns are mounting about whether it may be too late to delve into an “energy-only bill,” let alone a “utility-only” carbon-curbing bill.

AREVA and the Canadian province of New Brunswick last week signed a letter of intent to develop a clean energy park near the Point Lepreau nuclear station. The project would include a midsize third-generation reactor—and it wouldn’t be a prototype, AREVA has reportedly said.

Utility executives cite regulation, the environment, technology, finance, and end users as the five most critical issues facing the energy industry today, a newly released study by Platts and Capgemini finds.

GE on Tuesday invited technologists, entrepreneurs, and start-ups all over the world to enter a $200 million challenge that seeks ideas to create a smarter and cleaner power grid while also accelerating the adoption of more efficient grid technologies.

Babcock & Wilcox subsidiary Babcock & Wilcox Nuclear Energy Inc. (B&W NE) and Bechtel Power Corp. today announced they have entered into a formal alliance to design, license, and deploy a Generation III++ small modular nuclear power plant based on B&W mPower small modular reactor (SMR) technology. The new alliance will be known as Generation mPower and could deploy its first units by 2020.

The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday filed a 48-page appeal asking the five-member board at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to set aside an application for the Yucca Mountain waste repository project. The agency said that Energy Secretary Steven Chu had the authority to halt the project.

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) on Tuesday approved a San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) 120-mile transmission line from remote areas in southern California’s Imperial Valley to residences and businesses in the San Diego area.

Italy’s Enel on Monday inaugurated its hydrogen-fueled combined-cycle power plant at Fusina, near Venice. The €50 million project, the first industrial-scale facility of its kind in the world, uses 1.3 metric tons of hydrogen per hour to generate 60 million kWh a year of electricity as well as heat. It reportedly has an overall efficiency of about 42%.