The U.S. coal power industry saw a spate of important announcements this week.

By Kennedy Maize The Obama administration has picked Steven Chu, currently the director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be secretary of energy. The selection was quite a surprise, as Chu’s name had not surfaced in any of the rumors circulating in Washington. Indeed, he’s not well know in Washington political […]

In the past two days, numerous news outlets have reported that president-elect Barack Obama will nominate Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to become the next secretary of energy. If he is officially announced and then confirmed, Chu will become the 12th individual to lead the Department of Energy. Do you remember the 11 who preceded him, starting in 1977?

By Kennedy Maize
The Obama administration has picked Steven Chu, currently the director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be secretary of energy. The selection was quite a surprise, as Chu’s name had not surfaced in any of the rumors circulating in Washington. Indeed, he’s not well know in Washington political circles.

South Africa, reeling from a power crisis caused by a lack of generating capacity, on Friday canceled a plan to build a nuclear plant for about $12 billion, saying it was “not in a position to invest in nuclear.”

The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments in Entergy v. EPA, a case that questions an appellate court decision that said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot conduct a cost-benefit analysis in regulating how power plants use cooling water from rivers and lakes. Power companies and the EPA—pitted against environmental groups led by […]

Alstom and Polish company PGE Elektrownia Belchatow S.A. on Monday announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop and implement carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at the 4,440-MW Belchatow power plant in Poland—Europe’s largest conventional power station. In the first phase of the Polish project, Alstom will design and construct a […]

Constellation Energy announced on Monday that its board of directors had authorized the company to begin talks with Électricité de France (EDF), following the French nuclear giant’s unsolicited proposal earlier last week to buy 50% of Constellation’s nuclear generation and operation business for $4.5 billion. The Baltimore company’s board had in mid-September approved an acquisition […]

American Electric Power (AEP) said last week it is evaluating the feasibility of building a multistate, extra-high-voltage transmission project—more than 1,000 miles long—across the Upper Midwest to support the development of renewable energy. The utility has proposed building the first 765-kV extra-high-voltage transmission lines (PDF) to connect major wind developments in the Dakotas and surrounding states […]

TransGas Development Systems LLC (TGDS) plans to build a coal-to-liquids plant in West Virginia, company officials announced yesterday during the West Virginia Energy Summit. The New York–based company filed a permit to build the $3 billion facility in Mingo County. Projected to be operational by 2013, the plant will be built in the region’s new […]

The Scottish government last week outlined criteria and officially launched the grand Saltire Prize Challenge, a marine energy innovation contest to unleash the region’s massive renewable energy potential.

By Kennedy Maize It’s time for the latest round of the name game, this time focusing on who President Elect Obama will pick to head the Department of Energy. Clearly, the the DOE pick is a second-level decision, after economics and national security. In fact, DOE really doesn’t have much to do with energy. Around […]

Current U.S.-supported methane-recovery projects worldwide, when fully implemented, will deliver estimated annual emissions reductions of more than 24 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, tripling the reductions achieved in 2006.

A feasibility study released Nov. 27 by Ontario’s Bruce Power has concluded that nuclear energy could add 1,000 MW of electricity to the Saskatchewan power grid by 2020. The company considered three reactor designs during the feasibility study: Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s ACR-1000, Westinghouse’s AP1000, and Areva’s EPR.

On Nov. 25, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it had docketed, or accepted for review, a combined construction and operating license (COL) application for a new reactor at the Fermi site in Michigan. Detroit Edison’s application, submitted Sept. 18, is the 12th COL request the agency has accepted for review.

American Electric Power Co. said on Monday that a unit at one of its nuclear power plants damaged in September will not return to full service until 2010. The company also estimated the cost of repairing and replacing the damaged turbine rotors in Cook Nuclear Plant’s Unit 1 at up to $332 million. AEP figures to recover most of the cost through insurance and warranties.

Everyone knows that China is building coal-fired power plants at a furious rate in China, but less well-known are its construction projects abroad, including in India and Indonesia. And on Dec. 1, CIC Energy announced that it had selected China’s power station builder Shanghai Electric Group Co. Ltd. (SEC) to be the EPC contractor for a 1,320-MW power plant at its $3 billion Mmamabula coal mine and electricity generation plant in Botswana.

On the day after Thanksgiving, four federal agencies released a Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Final PEIS) proposing to designate more than 6,000 miles of energy transport corridors on federal lands in 11 western states.

New ways of squeezing out greater efficiency from solar photovoltaic cells are emerging from computer simulations and lab tests conducted by a team of physicists and engineers at MIT.

The Marine Corps wants its base at Kaneohe Bay to become energy self-sufficient by 2015. One step toward that goal involves building a sizable solar power array around Kansas Tower Hill, which could be operating by next fall.

Power producers in politically unstable regions of the world are finding that generating capacity is useless unless they can ensure the reliable delivery of fuel to run their power plants. Such was the dark lesson in both Nigeria and Gaza in the past week.

Call it the "trillion dollar conundrum." Really big money is needed to equip the U.S. transmission system to handle a variety of new requirements and increased load, but it isn’t clear how to raise it, spend it, or recover it. Expect new renewables projects to die on the vine until the gridlock loosens.

A new line of injection-molded flowmeters from Dakota Instruments, Polysulfone Meters, meet the performance demands of a wide variety of industry-specific applications, including air-sampling equipment, water treatment and distribution systems, photo processing equipment, aquaculture, and desalinization equipment. The easy-to-install flowmeters are manufactured of polysulfone, a heat-resistant thermoplastic material for good chemical resistance. Flow indications provide […]

Yokogawa Corp. of America introduced the ToughMeter series 270, a series of analog panel meters designed to operate in harsh environments. The 2½-inch and 3½-inch ToughMeter features an accuracy of 2% DC and 3% AC. Both have metal cases and polycarbonate windows, gasket-sealed bezels, terminals, and zero regulators to ensure protection from dust and moisture. […]

McCrometer’s new Corrosion-Resistant V-Cone Flow Meter has been engineered to provide precise flow measurement in liquid, steam, or gas media, while requiring virtually no maintenance in the most demanding processes where corrosive conditions exist. The design of the flowmeter is based on advanced differential pressure (DP) technology and requires no moving parts. Built-in flow conditioning […]

Europe has seen tremendous activity in the development of renewable energy as a response to climate change. As a result, some of the most important renewable energy firms operating in the U.S. are based in Denmark, Germany, and Spain. Stable, high-level policy is one reason Europe dominates this sector.

FilterSense’s new multi-channel particulate monitor, Model PM 100, is suited for monitoring multi-compartment fabric filter baghouses, multi-chamber cartridge dust collectors, multi-clone cyclones, and clusters of bin vents. For large fabric filters in coal-burning power plants, FilterSense claims the multi-channel systems have proven to be vastly superior to an opacity monitor in the stack. The system […]

An historic election is over and the people have spoken. President-elect Obama and an expanded congressional majority will now rebalance the economic and environmental importance of coal-fired generation in this country differently than ever before, and that change is unsettling to many. When the expected costs of the anticipated new policies are counted, I predict many voters will experience a severe case of buyer’s remorse.

The SBS75x Connector, the newest addition to Anderson Power Products’ family of Finger Proof products, is recommended for use with hazardous DC voltages in systems operating from 50 to 600 volts, where risk of shock can be health-threatening. The patented connector provides power contacts rated up to 110 amps, and the touch-safe design provides protection […]

Since the early 1860s, when French engineer and inventor Auguste Mouchout used a glass-enclosed cauldron, a polished parabolic dish, and the sun’s heat to produce steam for the first solar steam engine, solar thermal energy (STE) technology has come a long way. Today, an assorted range of technologies is in use or on-line — including […]