POWER

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%.

Shaw Group, Toshiba Corp., and Exelon Corp. unit Exelon Nuclear Partners on Monday announced an agreement to jointly pursue opportunities to design, engineer, build, and operate new nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia.

China is reportedly looking to build 10 nuclear reactors using AP1000 technology, including the four under construction at Sanmen in coastal Zhejiang province and at Haiyang, Shandong province.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., July 8, 2010 — It’s become a cliche that government should not try to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. But cliches are useful by the circumstance that they are often correct. So now we come to government loan guarantees, a classic example of government picking winners and losers. […]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed regulations on Tuesday to tackle power plant pollution that drifts across the borders of 31 eastern states and the District of Columbia. Replacing the Bush-era Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), the proposed “transport” rule seeks to reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) to meet state-by-state emission reductions.

Six Japanese companies established a joint venture on Tuesday to propose new nuclear projects abroad. The companies are Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), Chubu Electric, Kansai Electric, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).

The Department of Energy (DOE) last week offered a $1.45 billion conditional loan guarantee to Spain’s Abengoa to finance the construction and start-up of a concentrating solar power (CSP) generating facility in Solana, Ariz. The facility, which Abengoa claims will be the “largest CSP plant in the world,” will use the first six-hour thermal energy storage system in the U.S.

The DOE awarded a $400 million conditional loan guarantee to Abound Solar Manufacturing for the assembly of thin-film, cadmium-telluride solar modules. The project will allow the manufacturing technology to be commercially deployed for the first time ever.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) last week that will strengthen the working relationship between the two agencies regarding future development of commercial renewable offshore energy projects on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.

The DOE today announced it would fund 10 projects aimed at developing advanced technologies for capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from coal combustion. The projects, valued at up to $67 million over three years, focus on reducing the energy and efficiency penalties associated with applying currently available carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to existing and new power plants.

A study released last week by the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) concludes that smart metering initiatives alone are not enough to save energy.

Alstom and Schneider Electric Close AREVA T&D Acquisition Deal. Alstom and Schneider Electric on June 7 closed a €2.29 billion (US$2.75 billion) transaction to acquire AREVA’s transmission and distribution arm, AREVA T&D, after obtaining approvals from relevant competition authorities and the French Commission des Participations et des Transferts. A consortium agreement for the joint acquisition […]

A new continuous particulate emissions monitor and baghouse filter leak analyzer incorporates automatic self-checks (zero and span) to ASTM standards to automate compliance with regulatory requirements for periodic instrument validation. The particulate monitor also features system checks to simplify installation and setup and to improve overall performance. Benefits include stack monitoring, detecting filter leaks, eliminating […]

A federal judge recently dismissed a lawsuit in which the plaintiffs alleged that defendants’ production of chemicals and electricity had “added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina.” The judge’s reasoning reveals the inherent limitations of courts unilaterally initiating policies to address climate change issues.

Endress+Hauser announced the Deltatop differential pressure (DP) flowmeter for measuring gas, liquid, and steam in ½-inch to 24-inch pipes. The company said that Deltatop is a complete flow monitoring solution, including an averaging pitot tube, and offers customers the most accurate and reliable DP flow technology in the industry. The flowmeter features precision-machined orifice plate […]

It’s no surprise that China leads the world in recent power capacity additions. What may surprise you is the precise mix of options this vast country is relying upon to meet its ever-growing demand for electricity. As a result, this ancient civilization is fast becoming the test bed and factory for the newest generation and transmission technologies.

Degree Controls has introduced AccuSense F333 air velocity sensors, a series of low-cost airflow sensors designed for field systems. The AccuSense F333 provides air velocity measurements within the range of 0.2 m/s to 10 m/s (40–2,000 fpm) while maintaining a ±10% accuracy across a temperature range of 15C to 60C with a 2% or better […]

Regenerative activated coke technology (ReACT) is an integrated multipollutant control approach that removes SO_x, NO_x, and Hg from coal-fired plants by adsorption with activated coke to attain emissions levels found at natural gas–fired plants. One big advantage of this technology is that it uses only a fraction of the water used by conventional wet flue gas desulfurization. A recent license agreement brings this technology to the U.S.

It is clear that energy use will expand in the future as our population and society’s standard of living increase. Meanwhile, the push toward a sustainable lifestyle requires that all resources be utilized efficiently and sparingly. The National Academy of Sciences has identified paradigm shifts from current processes to an ideal vision centered on renewable energy and an atom economy—defined as maximum incorporation of starting materials into final products. These seemingly disparate paths converge if one considers energy production from municipal solid waste (MSW).

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts fire at the top of its safety concerns, calculating that fire constitutes half of all reactor safety risks, and lately fire safety has again become a major industry issue. For example . . .

Cap-and-trade programs are featured in at least two U.S. legislative proposals to reduce carbon emissions, usually by around 80% by 2050 using a 2005 baseline. The benefits that accrue from the immense investment required to reach these goals are nebulous and don’t occur until decades after the investment. Based on my back-of-the-envelope analysis, the cost-benefit ratio of these proposals does not pass a cursory cost-benefit analysis.

Circulating fluid bed (CFB) dry scrubbing technologies provide distinct advantages over conventional spray dryer absorber scrubbers for removing SO₂ from flue gases. The CFB also competes well against wet limestone flue gas desulfurization processes typically favored for large boilers firing high-sulfur coals. With high SO₂ removal rates in a dry treatment process, the CFB scrubber appears to be the best of both technologies: a water-stingy scrubber with high SO₂ removal rates.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose an emissions standard for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants emitted by coal- and oil-fired electric generating units in March of 2011. The anticipated rule would require emission control to meet the various standards using maximum achievable control technology, as determined by the prescriptive requirements of the Clean Air Act. In response to the expected rule-making, utilities will be required to make technology decisions in order to ensure compliance. One cost-effective approach to compliance may be the use of “co-benefits” from air quality control systems (AQCSs) already in service that are designed to remove other pollutants.

An "emergency war supplemental" appropriation bill that Congress was considering at this writing has implications for the power industry: The measure includes $9 billion each for new loan guarantees for nuclear power and renewable energy projects.