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Nuclear
The Global Nuclear Power Industry Faces Localized Outlooks
Shamelessly adapting the great British novelist Charles Dickens, for the global nuclear industry, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times; it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness; it is
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Renewables
Why Russia’s Largest Independent Power Company Built a Solar Facility in Siberia
One of Russia’s largest solar photovoltaic (PV) facilities has been grid-connected in Abakan, located in the Republic of Khakassia. The Khakass capital in central Russia just north of Mongolia, historically
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Commentary
Radical Energy Breakthroughs—Without the Risk
Among the greatest revolutions of the modern world is one that most of us take for granted: electrification. When we flip on the light switch, turn on the TV, or plug in our cell phones, power is there, 99.99%
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Renewables
China Overtakes EU’s Wind Installations
China has edged past the European Union (EU) in terms of total installed wind capacity, with 145.1 GW to the EU’s 141.6 GW. This means that China, which erected a stunning 30.5 GW in 2015—nearly half of
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Nuclear
Entergy Sheds Uneconomic Merchant Nuclear Plants to Focus on Regulated Business
Entergy Corp., a dominant investor-owned utility in the middle south, hugging the Mississippi River drainage area from New Orleans to Memphis (including a piece of Texas), faces what may be a unique generation
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Renewables
Vattenfall Completes World’s First Decommissioning of an Offshore Wind Farm
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
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Nuclear
Commission Backs Plan to Store World’s Nuclear Waste in Australian Outback
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
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Renewables
First Turbine Deployed at French Tidal Power Farm
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
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Renewables
EEI Gets Pushback on Proposed Rebranding of Utility Solar
The Edison Electric Institute has come under fire for a new communications plan that was intended to depict utilities as more community-minded.
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NALCO TO BECOME NALCO WATER
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 […]
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Renewables
D.C. Regulators Approve Exelon-Pepco Merger
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.
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Renewables
Emerging Microgrid Business Models
Whether utilities, technology providers, or independent third-party upstarts are best suited to create a reliable recipe for microgrid development remains an open question.
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Renewables
Microgrid Development Lessons Learned
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.
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Press Releases
NTE Energy awards Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas
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 […]
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Press Releases
Ansaldo Energia awarded contracts worth around €600 million euros to supply the power island for Ibri and Sohar III combined-cycle power plants in Oman
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 […]
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PowerCell Sweden AB receives yet another order of two PowerCell S3 prototype fuel cell stacks from a strategic important global custome
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 […]
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Ansaldo Energia, with the acquisition of key Alstom technology and assets from General Electric, extends its global footprint in Europe, the Middle East and the United States and broadens its portfolio of products and services
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 […]
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Legal & Regulatory
Belo Monte Hydro Plant Stunned, Revived Again
Legal battles to stall the 11-GW Belo Monte hydroelectric dam—being built on the Xingu River in Amazon forest for one of the world’s largest power plants—are raging on in Brazil (Figure 1). In January
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Coal
Lower Coal Utilization in China Pegged in Part to Massive Coal Power Glut
Tremors in China’s economy rattled its power sector last year. For the first time since the Cultural Revolution in 1968, the country’s power generation dropped from the previous year—modestly, by 0.2%
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Legal & Regulatory
Coal Ash Hits the Big Time
Regulatory attention is rarely welcome in the best of times. When the attention is focused on a practice that has been standard operating procedure for more than a century—especially a practice that has left
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Gas
Siemens, GE, MHPSA Advance Gas Power Efficiency
Gas power technologies set new benchmarks over the past few months as gas turbine “gorillas” Siemens, General Electric (GE), and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas (MHPSA) all reported new
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Nuclear
South Korean Grid Connects World’s First APR1400 Nuclear Reactor
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
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Gas
Desalination Expands, but Energy Challenges Remain
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
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Legal & Regulatory
Germany’s Energiewende at a New Turning Point
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
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Legal & Regulatory
Zero-Discharge Pozzolanic Brine Solidification: Another Option for Treating FGD Wastewater
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
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O&M
Monitoring and Treatment of Closed-Loop Cooling Water Systems
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
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Renewables
Xcel Energy: Committed to Renewables, but Going Its Own Way
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
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Technology
Beyond the Firewall: Best Practices for Cybersecurity Risk Management
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
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Coal
Will Tomorrow’s Power Plants Have Enough Water?
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
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Gas
New Metering Solution Controls Condensate in HRSG Systems
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