A key challenge for new leaders is to make a transition from actually doing the work to making sure that the work gets done. That takes a mind shift.

Although it doesn’t get much attention, the world’s first and largest source of renewable electricity, water power, is still a major player on the world stage. Though viewed as politically incorrect by some folks, mostly in the developed world, and despite its well-known environmental impacts, using water to turn turbines to generate electricity represents an attractive way to generate electricity with no fuel costs, even in the U.S. Here’s what’s being talked about in the U.S., India, Turkey, Nigeria, and China.

Whatever happened to the venerable military institution of KP? It’s been outsourced, along with a lot of other tasks in the work environment. Outsourcing often makes sense, but it isn’t a panacea.

Despite high-powered congressional legislation in 2005, the U.S. is still unable to site high-voltage interstate transmission lines in a timely fashion. Two new reports suggest ways out of the gridlock.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has identified four breakthrough technologies and funded them through its Strategic Research and Development Portfolio. EPRI expects to accelerate development of these innovations because they are likely to have significant effects on how electricity is generated and delivered.

It’s time to pull my crystal ball out of storage, polish it up, and give you another round of U.S. industry predictions for 2011. I graded last year’s predictions B+ (for a complete rundown of how I graded each prediction, see page 32), but I’m convinced I’ll do better in 2011.

Though electricity generation has entered a key period of transition—as investment shifts to low-carbon technologies—world electricity demand is set to grow faster than any other “final form of energy,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its latest annual World Energy Outlook.

China in mid-November embarked upon building the first massive hydropower project in Tibet, a 6 x 85-MW plant straddling the middle reaches of the mighty Yarlung Tsangpo River (Figure 2). According to the Hunan Daily, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, Sinohydro began damming the river in Shannan Prefecture, Tibet, on Nov. 8, kicking off the 7.9 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) “run of the river” project that is estimated to generate electricity for the surrounding region by 2014.

Paul Browning, vice president, thermal products for GE Power & Water, sees the greatest short-term business opportunities beyond the U.S., in “high-speed” countries.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has begun converting a combined-cycle plant in Japan to prepare for verification testing of its long-anticipated J-Series gas turbine in February 2011—a system that the company claims has the most power generation capacity and highest thermal efficiency in the 1,600C turbine inlet temperature class (Figure 3). The work being carried out at the Takasago Machinery Works facility in Hyogo Prefecture (where the company’s G-Series gas turbines were tested) includes installation of the J-Series turbine, and it marks another major milestone in the technology’s development.