POWER

Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman spoke at the recent 2008 Nuclear Energy Summit that was convened to discuss the importance of nuclear power to a healthy U.S. economy.

On Sept. 9, Sweden’s Vattenfall inaugurated the world’s first demonstration plant that connects carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in a full-chain working system. The inauguration of the pilot plant at Schwarze Pumpe in Germany, which underwent 10 years of testing, was a milestone that marked its move from the laboratory to reality, Vattenfall said. […]

The year 2008 is shaping up nicely for nuclear power in the U.S. Since September 2007, when NRG Energy and the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co. filed the first complete U.S. nuclear plant license application in 29 years with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a dozen more companies and consortia have followed suit. And […]

News items of interest to power industry professionals. Mitsubishi to supply gas turbines to Endesa. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) said in September it had received a full turnkey order for two sets of liquefied natural gas – fired gas turbine combined- cycle (GTCC) power generation systems from Endesa Generacion S.A., an electricity generation company […]

Do you have enough women working in your power plant? Forget for a moment equal opportunity laws. More important is the knowledge that the programs and culture changes that would make women more likely to consider a plant career are the same ones that would make it more attractive to many younger men.

This summary of power generation projects is a web-only supplement to the November 2008 special report titled “Whistling in the dark: Inside South Africa’s power crisis.”

Advanced computer design tools have merged with high-definition laser camera scan data to produce integrated images that are particularly useful for outage and maintenance planning.

Dynegy Inc. must disclose timely and relevant information to investors about the financial risks that climate change may pose under an agreement the national energy company signed with New York’s attorney general on Thursday. Dynegy is the second of five companies to agree to make climate change disclosures. Xcel Energy was the first, signing a […]

French nuclear engineering firm AREVA and global defense and technology company Northrop Grumman Corp. plan to jointly build a new facility in Newport News, Va., to engineer and manufacture heavy components for AREVA’s U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR). The companies expect that the new facility will boost the U.S. nuclear resurgence. The companies said Thursday […]

Italy’s largest power company, Enel, and its biggest oil and gas company, Eni, will partner to create the country’s first project to capture carbon dioxide from a coal-fired plant and store it underground. The companies’ chief executives signed a strategic agreement last week at Italy’s Ministry of Environment headquarters to join forces and develop an […]

Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) announced last week that a recalibration of the international standard by which solar cells are measured revealed that they had created the first silicon solar cell to achieve the “magic” efficiency milestone of 25%. Physics dictates that the theoretical maximum efficiency for first-generation silicon photovoltaic cells will be […]

The impact of environmental initiatives and the need for transmission infrastructure are among the most important issues facing electric reliability in North America over the coming 10 years, the quasi-public agency North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said last week in its 2008 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (PDF). Though the total miles of transmission additions have […]

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) last week announced plans to allow geothermal drilling in more than 190 million acres of federal land, spanning 12 Western states. Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the interior, said that the proposed initiative could increase geothermal power production in the U.S. tenfold. “Geothermal energy will play a key role […]

By Kennedy Maize Can termites lead the way to energy independence? A new study from the University of Florida in Gainsville says the tiny wood chompers and the bacteria in their gut could help turn non-edible plant parts into energetic ethanol. In a paper to be published in the journal Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining, Florida […]

Exelon has proposed the purchase of all the outstanding shares of NRG’s common stock for $6.2 billion. The combination of Exelon and NRG would form a utility with a generating capacity of about 47,000 MW and create the largest utility in the U.S., dwarfing both American Electric Power with 36,000 MW and Duke Energy with […]

Europe’s first EPR nuclear power plant, the Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, is now three years behind schedule and will not come on-line until 2012, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) admitted last week. The delay is the fourth announced for the 1,600-MW plant, which has been plagued with faulty materials and planning problems since construction […]

The UK will build only a quarter of the 29 GW of offshore wind farms needed to reach its target to have 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 unless the government acts urgently to reduce costs and risks to developers, a government-funded but independent think tank said in a report launched last week. […]

The Indiana Court of Appeals on Thursday ruled against four environmental and consumer groups and upheld a decision by state regulators to allow Duke Energy to build a $2.35 billion integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant at its coal and oil–fired Edwardsport facility in Knox County, Ind. Duke and Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Company […]

PJM Interconnection has approved $1.8 billion in electric transmission system additions and grid upgrades to enhance the reliability of its power supply system. The grid operator’s system serves parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. On Friday, it said the upgrades and improvements authorized by its board comprised dozens of projects. Most new […]

Belgian utility Electrabel has threatened legal action if the country’s government enacts a bill that would force the its two nuclear operators to pay a € 250 million ($336 million) tax. The one-time levy would force Electrabel and SPE to contribute to the 2008 financial year. If they do not comply, a penalty of 2% […]

A regional system plan for 2008 released Friday by ISO New England Inc. forecasts that the region is likely to have sufficient capacity to meet electricity demand through 2014, but significant challenges—such as major transmission upgrades—remain for the region New England Inc. is the operator of the region’s bulk power system and wholesale electricity markets. […]

By Kennedy Maize   Evidence builds for the proposition that constructing new high-voltage transmission remains harder than bringing on new power generation. Facing increasing political opposition in West Virginia and Maryland, American Electric Power, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and Allegheny Energy of Greenburg, Pa., last week said they are going to reroute their planned 765-KV, […]

By Kennedy Maize   What will the new president really do once on infrastructure spending, despite the anodyne economic platitudes of the campaign? My guess is we will see the greatest economic stimulus effort since WW2. Deficits be damned. That’s probably good. The economic enemy is deflation, not inflation, if the Great Depression is any […]

A report from the front lines of the alleged global warming war. The Anchorage Daily News reported on Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, that summer snow loss in the state in 2008 was less than winter snowfall, reversing a trend of two centuries. The newspaper said that “unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by […]

Desperate to score points in a crucial state where they are in the double-digit dumps, the Republican McCain-Palin presidential ticket rolled out their heartfelt support for “clean coal technologies” at a rally in Scranton, Pa., this week. Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin appeared in full throat. Her homage to coal, of course, came despite McCain’s […]

Top Plant: From tall skyscrapers and flashing neon signs to Buddhist temples and pagodas, South Korea is a mixture of the new and old Asia. Doing its part to help modernize this country, the Boryeong Thermal Power Complex operates six coal-fired 500-MW units that provide electricity to power South Korea’s economic growth. One of the important reasons for this facility’s overall success is its operational reliability. An example of this is Boryeong Unit 3’s outstanding achievement of 3,000 days of trouble-free operation.

A utility evaluated various methods of obtaining a NO_x reduction of at least 30%, as required by upcoming regulations for its boiler, which originally produced 0.54 lb of NO_x/million Btu at 410 MW full load. Nalco Mobotec engineers performed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the boiler to first understand the boiler’s combustion process and then determine the most economical method to achieve the required NO_x reduction.

Top Plant: Alliant Energy’s Dubuque Generating Station is a fine example of why small doesn’t mean insignificant in the power generation industry. This winner of the EUCG Best Performer award in the small plant category shows that its operating excellence towers over that of many larger and much newer coal-fired power plants.

As fluid passes through Exact Flow’s new DX-DL dual-rotor turbine flowmeter, the dual rotors become hydraulically coupled due to their counter-rotation. Not only does this allow the rotors to overcome the inertia and drag that typically affect single-rotor turbine flowmeters, it also extends the flow range to 500:1—five times the 100:1 flow range of a […]

The United States is used to transporting fuels to electric generation centers that are close to where the power supply is needed. We see trains carry coal by the carload from resource-rich areas to generation centers across the country. Natural gas is distributed through pipelines. Even uranium is transported to supply our nuclear stations. However, […]