The Department of Energy on Thursday announced up to $338 million in Recovery Act funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies. The grants, which will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and nonfederal cost-share funds, back 123 projects in 39 states.

Twelve companies and the Desertec Foundation on Friday formally launched a joint venture to manage a project that seeks to generate up to 15% of Europe’s power by 2050 with giant solar and wind farms installed in North African and Middle Eastern deserts. Firms include energy giants E.ON, RWE, and Siemens Energy, and investment companies Deutsche Bank and Munich Re.

Utility industry representatives opposed legislation at a House subcommittee hearing last week that could authorize the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to enforce cyber security standards on all plants connected to the bulk power system.

American Electric Power’s (AEP’s) long-awaited validation of advanced carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies at its Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, W.Va., was formally kicked off on Friday. The project is being watched closely around the world because it will be the first to capture carbon dioxide from a pulverized coal-fired power plant as well as inject it into a permanent storage site more than 7,800 feet underground.

Participating utilities pulled the plug on a fully permitted project to build the $1.6 billion Big Stone II coal-fired power plant near Millbank, S.D., on Monday, saying they could not find new backers necessary to build the 500-to-600-MW facility.

The Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) said on Friday it would permit Constellation Energy’s sale of 49.99% of its nuclear business to French group Electricité de France (EDF) for $4.5 billion if Constellation subsidiary Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. agreed to pay $100 rebates to its customers and invested $250 million to control power rate increases.

Entergy Corp. reportedly won’t pursue new nuclear builds in the U.S. Southeast because of lower demand seen after Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, the recession, and abundant but unused independent power generation in the region, the company’s CEO J. Wayne Leonard told reporters at this week’s Edison Electric Institute financial conference.

By Kennedy Maize President Obama in late October announced that the Department of Energy would award $3.4 billion in grants to allegedly “smart grid” technologies. As I parse the awards, my reaction is that they are fundamentally stupid. Most of the money – to be matched by the private sector (those matches presumably are tax deductible […]

While pundits opine that the U.S. economy is in recovery, that doesn’t show up in the world of coal-fired electric power plants (perhaps lagging economic indicators). For proof, see these recent stories.

The ongoing congressional debate over national health care policy, regardless of the outcome, has important implications for employers who today provide health benefits to their employees. Company management must pay close attention to Washington discussions of health care and to the implications for their companies of what is eventually adopted.

Social media have emerged as an important force in the workplace, both as new ways of doing business and as challenges to organization management. Among those challenges is defining acceptable employee behavior on and off the job.

What is the smart grid all about? A new book—a dictionary—attempts to define and demystify the jargon and bafflegab surrounding the buzzing smart grid. It’s a somewhat flawed but worthwhile first attempt at unraveling the often bizarre and sometimes baloney-filled smart grid nomenclature.

While industry interests were trying to get on board the smart grid gravy train last fall in Washington, D.C., in rural West Virginia folks were dealing with the force of a political locomotive pushing a high-voltage interstate grid, with property owners opposed and labor in favor.

It’s no longer a 9-to-5 world. Management gurus Peter Stark and Jane Flaherty offer advice on how to manage time in today’s multi-tasking environment.

Natural gas is back, says gas guru Bobby Hefner, and in a big way. New technologies, new discoveries, low prices, and new optimism characterize a natural gas industry that just three years ago was bemoaning its future and looking to foreign LNG imports as the industry’s salvation. Today, the gloom is gone, and the gas folks are clicking their gaseous heels in glee.

In a series of ironies, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has voted to reject an early finding that the U.S. can adequately manage nuclear reactor spent fuel, in the wake of the Obama administration’s decision to pull the radioactive plug on Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The vote by the majority Republicans on the commission effectively puts a temporary ban on new nuclear reactor construction in the U.S.

U.S. Democrats in the White House and Congress are in an unseemly race to get something, anything, enacted into law before the December climate gab fest in Copenhagen. But it’s a fools’ game and unlikely to succeed.

What’s to learn about regulation from Julia Child and Michael Pollan, gurus of the food world? Plenty, says Scott Hempling of the National Regulatory Research Institute.

Don’t let your fears of inadequacy limit your ability to succeed in your life and career.

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) looking into new power generation cycles have designed an innovative oxyfuel system that uses a pressurized coal combustor to capture and concentrate carbon dioxide emissions for direct injection into deep geological formations.

Chile was considered a world leader for reforming and liberalizing its power sector as early as the 1980s. However, 25 years later, Chile is at a crossroads in terms of developing future capacity. With an estimated GDP growth rate of 2% to 3% during the current global financial crisis, a highly competitive economy, an established democracy, and a stable macroeconomic environment, Chile is considered a premium destination for foreign investment.

Denmark in September inaugurated a 209-MW offshore wind park — the world’s largest to date — off the west coast of Jutland, in the North Sea.

In an exclusive agreement with the EUCG Nuclear Committee, POWER was provided access to some key, high-level performance and operational data from the group’s nuclear industry benchmarking database. All U.S., and many international, nuclear power plants are members of the committee and have contributed to its database for many years. This month we introduce you to the EUCG Nuclear Committee and share sample nuclear operating costs. Look for future reports on other key performance benchmarking metrics during 2010.

In 2007, Exelon Corp. began the Centralized Performance Monitoring (CPM) pilot program. The goal was to reduce downtime costs and lost revenue associated with the 25% of unplanned forced losses across its fleet of 17 nuclear power units without additionally taxing existing personnel or adding new personnel.

Replacing equipment inside a nuclear power plant requires careful planning that begins many months before the plant outage. Entergy has adopted advanced modeling and simulation tools that allow engineers to "walk through" the entire outage in a virtual model, thus avoiding unanticipated surprises.

Corrosion of steel water pipes in the safety-related piping systems of aging U.S. nuclear power plants is fast becoming a safety concern and a significant operational cost, not to mention an indication of potential future liability for nuclear utilities currently constructing new plants or retrofitting existing sites.

Most of the big utilities, with an eye to ensuring a good mix of future generation resources, have a new nuclear plant in development. Even though federal loan guarantees are slow to materialize and financing these multi-billion-dollar projects has become a bet-the-company investment, the NRC has more than 40 applications from generators that continue to believe in the future of nuclear power.

Electro Industries designed the Shark100 meter in response to requests within the industry for low-cost Ethernet-accessible power meters. Featuring 100BaseT Ethernet capability utilizing Modbus TCP as its standard protocol, the device offers a highly economical solution to provide multifunction metering. In addition to Ethernet TCP/IP, the Shark100 meter is a highly accurate 0.2% power and […]

Using modularization in the construction of nuclear containment vessels can be one way to control both cost and schedule when building the next generation of U.S. nuclear power plants. Although the advantages of modularization can be significant, each new reactor design and plant site poses unique construction challenges and must be individually analyzed to determine the benefits of this approach.