On Thursday, while visiting Jefferson City, Mo., with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Vice President Joe Biden announced that, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more than $3.3 billion in smart grid technology development grants and an additional $615 million for smart grid storage, monitoring, and technology viability were being made available.

On tax day, Dominion and BP Wind Energy announced full commercial operation of Phase I of the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm in Benton County, Ind. Of the 400-MW facility, BP and Dominion are partners on approximately 300 MW. The two companies could expand the facility to a total of 750 MW in the future.

In recognition that downed power lines can cause catastrophic wildfires when winds and temperatures are high, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has proposed to shut off power to a mountainous backcountry area in northeastern San Diego County when conditions warrant the emergency measure. If the proposal is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), it would be the first such attempt to prevent fires by shutting off power to an at-risk area.

Officials of Tri-State Generation and Transmission still don’t know what caused symptoms that sent a total of 19 contract workers to the hospital on Friday night. Those affected were among 600 workers who are engaged in a six-week outage to upgrade boiler, turbine-generator, and scrubber systems of northwest Colorado’s Craig Station Unit 3.

An op-ed by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis titled “Building the American Clean Energy Economy” ran in six city papers yesterday and today. Selected excerpts follow.

By Kennedy Maize The Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is declaring that carbon dioxide, a life-giving and ubiquitous atmospheric chemical, is a threat to public health. That’s a completely illogical determination, but also completely expected. The notion that carbon dioxide is a pollutant has nothing to do with chemistry or physics or biology or climatology, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last week approved a 20-year license extension for Exelon Corp.’s Oyster Creek Generating Station in Ocean Country, N.J.—the nation’s oldest operating nuclear power reactor.

Southern Co. has notified the Shaw Group and Westinghouse Electric Co. to proceed fully on their engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors planned for an expansion of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Augusta, Ga.—one of the first new U.S. nuclear construction projects in more than three decades.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has contracted the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to help it develop an interim road map to harmonize interoperability standards for the smart grid.

Wind power projects installed through the end of 2008 now generate 1.25% of the nation’s electricity, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) annual wind industry report shows. Texas again installed the most capacity, but Iowa surged into second place, beating California—the state where almost all wind power capacity in the U.S. was once installed.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday approved transmission infrastructure investment rate incentives for the Green Power Express, a proposed 3,000-mile transmission superhighway designed to deliver wind-powered renewable energy from the upper Midwest to Midwestern and Eastern states.

Experts assert that the U.S. grid—already proven by federal agencies to be vulnerable to cyber attacks—has been compromised by spies who tried to map the system and left bugs that could be used to disrupt networks at a time of war or crisis.

A memorandum of understanding last week signed by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chair Jon Wellinghoff clarifies jurisdictional responsibilities and establishes a process through which the two federal agencies will lease, license, and regulate all renewable energy development activities on the Outer Continental Shelf.

By Kennedy Maize A report in the Wall Street Journal that Russian and Chinese spy hackers have penetrated the U.S. electric power grid, and left malware and root kits, cyber time bombs, to explode in the future strikes me as bogus. The story had no named sources, and the details were sketchy at best. Where […]

By Kennedy Maize Is biology the key to improved battery performance? Researchers in a recent issue of Science magazine describe how genetically-engineered viruses could boost the power of lithium ion batteries, expected to be the batteries of choice for plug-in hybrid vehicles. A research team led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used […]

One of my favorite folk songs from the Great Depression is “The Big Rock Candy Mountain,” which I remember hearing sung by Burl Ives, the bearded and burley tenor who, among other gigs, performed with Pete Seeger and the Weavers in the 1950s (boy, does that date me). One of the lines in the song […]

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with power companies in a landmark decision last week, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not prohibited from considering a cost-benefit analysis when regulating the design of cooling water intake structures. This ruling affects power plants use cooling water from the nation’s rivers, lakes, and oceans.

A $2.1 billion project to build a 190-mile high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line across New York State has been suspended because rules pertaining to transmission tariffs recently made by the regional grid operator had created an “unacceptable financial risk,” the New York Regional Interconnect Inc. (NYRI) said Friday.

Finland’s government has proposed to enact a tax on nuclear and hydro power plants that were built before adoption of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to cut “windfall profits” that have resulted from the EU’s carbon emission trading program.

Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in the U.S. dropped 3.1% in 2008—a departure from the steadily increasing trend in preceding years, according to a new document from Environment Integrity Project (EIP), a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization.

The Maryland Senate last week approved a bill that reverses a failed 1999 energy deregulation policy and gives state regulators the authority to order utilities to build new power plants in the state. The future of the bill is unclear, however—the state’s annual 90-day legislative session is scheduled to end on April 13.

Drilling nears completion for the first large-scale carbon dioxide (CO₂) injection well in the U.S. for CO₂ sequestration, the Department of Energy (DOE) reported Tuesday. This project will be used to demonstrate that CO₂ emitted from industrial sources—such as coal-fired power plants—can be stored in deep geological formations to mitigate the release of large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

Radioactive materials are clinging to the inside walls of reactor system components because of a noble metals injection process error some years ago at Cooper Nuclear Station (CNS). CNS has launched an aggressive, long-term program to remove the materials, but until the work is successfully completed, the station is also taking extensive measures to protect employees and reduce higher source term dose.

The expanded line of CoolPoint vortex shedding flowmeters introduced recently by Universal Flow Monitors Inc. is designed to ensure flow consistency in hydroelectric generators, heat exchangers, boiler feed pumps, steam turbines, natural gas humidification, and process cooling applications where water quality may be less than optimal. Additions to the product line include four larger sizes […]

Red Valve Company Inc. launched Series DX Slurry Knife Gate Valve, a durable and user-friendly gate valve that has been designed especially for heavy slurry applications in the power and mining industries. When the valve opens, the reinforced elastomer sleeves seal against each other and provide a 100% full port opening, minimizing turbulence, which in […]

Dickson’s new stainless steel case data loggers are designed to monitor up to 275F in wet conditions. The watertight instruments are made of stainless steel and are available in three models: HT 200 (the "Takes-the-Heat-Watertight" model) and piercing probe models HT 220 and HT 225. All models are available with user-replaceable one-year batteries and USB-enabled […]

Al Gore, in his recent New York Times op-ed titled "The Climate for Change," calls for a "$400 billion investment over ten years to construct a national smart grid to distribute renewable energy." Echelon supports these proposed investments. We also believe the answer is not just in constructing something new but in transforming the existing […]

The GRAPHLON GM 860 developed by Graphite Metallizing is an abrasion-resistant bushing material that protects pumps and helps prolong pump life. Designed for use in the manufacture of pump bushings and other critical-wear parts, the tough, polymer/graphite-based material was developed to replace traditional pump materials, which are prone to damage from highly abrasive suspensions. It […]

The conversion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to pipeline-quality gas requires large quantities of low-grade thermal energy that may be available from industrial waste streams, steam power plants, or ocean water at the point of discharging LNG from the tanker. Alternatively, heat may be provided by the combustion of LNG or another fuel. In either case, the large temperature differences between these heat sources and the temperature of the LNG can be used to operate an engine that will offset or eliminate the pumping or fuel costs incurred.

House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a 648-page discussion draft of the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” a bill touted as a “comprehensive approach to America’s energy policy” because it seeks to establish, among other things, a carbon emissions reduction goal, a cap-and-trade program, and a federal renewable energy standard.