News items of interest to power industry professionals.

Chicago Blower has developed a series of 16 higher-pressure blowers that are suited to combustion air, aeration, cooling and drying systems, and other high-volume processes. The blowers support pressures of up to 91-inch water gauge and volumes of up to 18,000 cubic feet per minute. Features include a lightweight aluminum alloy wheel design to reduce […]

Performing regular oil changes on remote generators is far from simple or cost-effective. Here’s how one firm harnessed technology to extend oil change intervals from one week to two months.

Washington-based software developer Dynamic Systems Inc. launched the Basic Tool Manager, a software based on barcode technology, which has been developed for companies that want to reduce the loss of tools and save time tracking down equipment and tools. Using a wireless barcode reader, users can scan a personnel badge and then a piece of […]

There has been much excitement about the advent of the "smart grid" recently, especially because of the strong push by the Obama administration. Despite the simple-sounding term, the smart grid is not a simple concept.

Posi Lock’s hydraulic line featuring the patented "Safety Cage" has been expanded to include the PH-113IE, a three-jaw, 25-ton internal/external puller that is designed to solve problems associated with the removal of gears, bearings, and other press-fit items. The PH-113IE’s internal puller jaws have a reach from 2.5 inches to 7 inches and a spread […]

The debate over the benefits of using digital bus networks as the communications backbone of new power plants is all but settled. The technology is maturing, and the reliability of digital hardware is superior to that of hardwired systems. Newmont Gold Mining’s 200-MW TS Power Plant is perhaps the power industry’s best example of how a plantwide digital controls architecture can provide exceptional reliability and be significantly less costly to install.

An Arkansas appeals court last week overturned on technical grounds a key decision by the state regulators that authorized construction of Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO’s) 600-MW John W. Turk Jr. coal-fired power plant in Hempstead County—the nation’s first ultrasupercritical project. SWEPCO on Monday filed an appeal with the Arkansas Supreme Court and said it would continue the plant’s construction because delays could prove costly.

Carbon emissions produced by the combustion of coal may be collected and stored in the future, but a better approach (in the near term at least) is to reduce the carbon produced through efficient combustion technologies. Increasing the efficiency of new plants using ultrasupercritical technology will net less carbon released per megawatt-hour using the world’s abundant coal reserves while producing electricity at the lowest possible cost.

This March, Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) quietly completed development of the "J-series" gas turbine — a machine that has been extolled in the turbo-machinery world for its ability to produce one of the world’s largest power generation capacities and highest thermal efficiencies.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed by a narrow vote of 219–212 a mammoth climate change and energy bill on Friday that, among other things, seeks to establish a carbon emissions reduction goal, a cap-and-trade program, and a federal renewable energy standard. The bill now heads to the Senate.

At the opening ELECTRIC POWER 2009 plenary session, both the keynote speaker and the Power Industry Executive Roundtable participants kept circling back to the problems created by a public and lawmakers who seem to be promoting policies without an adequate understanding of energy realities. Most of the speakers acknowledged that the industry itself is partly to blame, but nobody offered a way forward.

In early June, as U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu confirmed to a House Subcommittee that Yucca Mountain repository was, without doubt, "off the table" and that a blue ribbon panel would further advise the government on what it should do with its high-level nuclear waste, Sweden announced the site of what could be the world’s first permanent spent fuel repository.

The Ontario government has suspended a 10-year multibillion dollar nuclear upgrade project to replace two reactors at the Darlington site, citing pricing and uncertainty regarding the future of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), Canada’s sole bidder.

Using nonhazardous waste for power generation is a trend that’s gaining steam for several reasons. Though there are several environmental reasons, another is the reliability of the fuel supply.

Ethiopia, the landlocked nation in East Africa from which key tributaries to the Nile River originate, completed construction of the continent’s highest dam, the 188-meter Tekezé Arch Dam (Figure 3) in February.

Exelon, the largest nuclear power generator in the U.S., has suspended plans to build a proposed two-unit nuclear plant in Victoria, Texas, because of uncertainties in the domestic economy and limited federal loan guarantees.

The industry is preparing for carbon legislation by exploring options for dealing with CO₂. But even if the technical issues are resolved, actually sequestering CO₂ poses a number of other daunting challenges.

The gas-rich Persian Gulf state of Qatar in May commenced construction of the region’s largest power and water plant, a massive project comprising eight gas turbine generators, eight heat-recovery steam generators, four steam turbine generators, and 10 desalination units.

The breach of a 50-year-old coal ash storage pond and subsequent ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tenn., last December was caused by a rare and complex combination of conditions, a six-month independent engineering study has found. These included the existence of an unusual bottom layer of ash and silt, the high water content of the wet ash, the increasing height of ash, and the construction of sloping dikes over the wet ash.

Reducing mercury emissions at coal-fired power plants by 90% has been considered the holy grail of mercury control. A new technique promises to get us there — at a price.

Engineers at Purdue University and Sandia National Laboratories have developed a technique that uses sensors and computational software to constantly monitor forces exerted on wind turbine blades. Their achievement could one day improve the efficiency of wind turbines by providing the blades’ "smart" structure with necessary data to adjust to rapidly changing wind conditions.

Federal agencies will work with western leaders to designate tracts of U.S. public lands in the West as prime zones for utility-scale solar energy development, fund environmental studies, open new solar energy permitting offices, and speed reviews of industry proposals, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said on Monday.

The welding of dissimilar metal joints in new and retrofit power plant boiler tubing has long proved challenging. New plants designed to operate at higher temperatures and pressures require advanced alloys and a filler metal that produces reliable welds. EPRI recently developed and sponsored the commercialization of a new filler metal. Its first application is the fabrication of boiler tubes for American Electric Power’s ultrasupercritical John J. Turk, Jr. Power Plant.

The intensifying spotlight on renewable energy seems to be casting a brighter light on the energy storage problem, with lawmakers, researchers, and investors scrambling to seek out the most feasible solution to bridge the intermittent nature of renewable power sources.

GE Energy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) last week agreed to co-develop a “next generation” steam turbine for use in gas turbine combined-cycle power plants. If successful, the parties will separately manufacture and sell the co-developed steam turbine.

The tension between the growing number of renewable energy projects and limited transmission capacity is reflected in Washington’s legislative agenda of establishing a national renewable portfolio standard and new transmission lines dedicated to moving renewable energy coast-to-coast. Even if those ideas become law, hurdles to the happy marriage of renewables and transmission remain.

Just as reports emerged earlier this year that NASA had abandoned, for lack of financial resources, its research into space-based solar power that would be harnessed via orbiting solar arrays beaming microwaves to earthly receivers, California’s Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) wrote the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) requesting its approval of a power purchase agreement from a similar technology.

Demand for renewable power is burgeoning as state governments (and maybe soon the U.S. federal government) impose increasingly rigorous environmental and procurement standards on the energy industry. Surprisingly, biomass cofiring has yet to attract much attention, even though it could help many utilities meet their renewable portfolio requirements, reduce carbon emissions, and solve other regional environmental problems. U.S. developers, investors, and regulators should consider including cofiring as part of the energy mix going forward.

In the world of North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) Reliability Standards, each company (entity) that must comply with the standards determines for itself the scope and size of its compliance program, based on the scope and size of its operations.