POWER

Vattenfall has dismantled five offshore wind turbines—with a total capacity of 10 MW—at the Yttre Stengrund wind farm in Kalmar Sound, Sweden. The month-long decommissioning project was the first in the

A nuclear power plant in Australia—a country that harbors the world’s largest resources of uranium but uses no nuclear power—wouldn’t be economical, but building a nuclear storage and disposal facility

The first of two 500-kW OpenHydro tidal turbines has been successfully deployed at French utility EDF’s much-watched Paimpol-Bréhat tidal project, which is under construction in North Brittany, France. When

Blades are probably the most delicate part of a wind turbine and the most susceptible to accidental damage. Some estimates suggest that greater than 90% of wind turbine blades are damaged to some degree while

Distributed generation (DG) is receiving much attention as a resource that can facilitate the development of a smarter, more resilient, and more sustainable electric grid. Several jurisdictions, including New

If you’re still thinking of drones and robots as more toy than tool, think again. The drones now working in the power sector have gone far beyond remote-control hobbies and now resemble something closer to

In 2000, the world had installed just 1 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity (in DC terms—see the sidebar, “AC or DC?”), a number that had surged to 39 GW by 2010 and 176 GW in 2014. Fueled by

The Edison Electric Institute has come under fire for a new communications plan that was intended to depict utilities as more community-minded.

NAME CHANGE REFLECTS STRONG WATER EXPERTISE Ecolab Inc., the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services, has changed the name of Nalco, its water and process services business, to Nalco Water. The new name more clearly communicates Nalco’s water management expertise as water scarcity is becoming a major global challenge and an […]

Exelon’s acquisition of Pepco Holdings was approved March 23 as the District of Columbia Public Service Commission approved the deal by a 2-1 vote.

Whether utilities, technology providers, or independent third-party upstarts are best suited to create a reliable recipe for microgrid development remains an open question.

Although new microgrid configurations, technologies, and business models are still evolving in the U.S., some lessons have been learned in the past few years. Aside from the fact that financing nontraditional/non-campus microgrids is hard, if there’s one overarching lesson, it’s that a microgrid designed to provide only one benefit or rely on only one generation source is unlikely to succeed.

Second order for an M501GAC Gas Turbine Unit to be installed at Kings Mountain Energy Center (Lake Mary, FL – March 14, 2016) Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas, Inc. (MHPSA) has been selected by NTE Energy (NTE) of Saint Augustine, FL to supply an M501GAC Gas Turbine for another of their power projects, this time for […]

Ansaldo Energia Switzerland has been awarded two contracts worth approximately 600 million Euros in total for the supply of major power plant equipment to two large IPP projects. The Ibri 1510 MW CCPP and Sohar III 1710 MW CCPP in the Sultanate of Oman are expected to be commissioned in early 2019. The Ibri and […]

Gothenburg, Sweden, February 29, 2016 Nordic leading fuel cell company PowerCell Sweden AB (publ) has received yet another order for two prototype units of the PowerCell S3 fuel cell stack from a strategic important global customer. PowerCell S3 fuel cell stack is based on the platform developed by PowerCell in the Autostack Core project together with its […]

The operation consolidates Ansaldo Energia’s international leadership of the gas turbine sector, making it possible for the company to double its turnover in the next five years Following the signing of the agreement on November 2, 2015, Ansaldo Energia, in which Fondo Strategico Italiano and Shanghai Electric hold stakes of 44.8% and 40% respectively, announces the closing of […]

The world’s first 1,400-MW Advanced Pressurized Reactor (APR1400), a South Korean Generation III design, has now been connected to the grid. Nearly eight years since construction kicked off in October

At the ballyhooed Paris climate conference last December, a little-noticed event occurred that could lead to important developments for electric generators. At the Paris meeting, some 80

Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) was adopted as policy beginning in September 2010, some six months before the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, and full legislative support was

In late 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published new regulations governing wastewater discharge from steam electric power plants. These new regulations, or effluent limitation guidelines

There may be multiple closed-loop cooling systems at your power plant. Chances are good that they cool or control temperature on some very critical components. The two that are most likely to exist are the

Utility holding company Xcel Energy, headquartered in Minneapolis and with large electric and gas operations in eight states in the upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountain West, and Texas, has ambitions to be the

Generating companies wondering if concerns about cybersecurity are overblown got some rude wake-up calls this winter. The first call came when Ukrainian media reported that a December 23 blackout that left

In a growing number of regions, power plants are competing with many other users for scarce freshwater supplies, and the situation is likely to get worse. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently

Many combined cycle and cogeneration plants with heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) were originally intended as baseload power sources or steam producers. In recent years, however, some have been

Exelon Completes Peach Bottom Reactor Uprate. An extended power uprate (EPU), begun in 2009 to increase the output from the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station by 270 MW, was completed in January, said the

Desert sand from the United Arab Emirates could be used in concentrating solar power (CSP) facilities to store thermal energy up to 1,000C. And replacing the typical heat storage materials used in thermal

China, which is seeing a nuclear plant boom with 30 reactors already in operation and 24 under construction, is accelerating development of its first 60-MWe (200-MWt) floating nuclear reactor. China General

John J. Novak The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan is arguably the most ambitious and far-reaching regulation in the agency’s history. America’s electric cooperatives

Steam turbines have to be warmed slowly to avoid excessive differential expansion of the various components, rotor stress, and potentially reduced service life. For that reason, startup times must be extended