Garlock Sealing Technologies developed a new ultra-low-emission, high-temperature valve stem spool packing designed to simplify leak detection and repair of volatile organic compound and hazardous air pollutant emissions. Delivering emissions performance of <20 parts per million average leakage, the Garlock Style 212-ULE comes in an easy-to-use recyclable dispenser with color-coded instructions. The number of typical […]

Construction of the world’s first nuclear power plant to use U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric’s AP1000 reactor technology commenced this April in China, with the pouring of 5,200 cubic meters of concrete at the nuclear island at Sanmen in Zhejiang province (Figure 3). The two-unit Sanmen plant will be built in three phases, with the first reactor […]

Exaktime’s ClockPoint Kiosk is new software that lets office staff clock in using a single PC running Windows XP or Vista in the same way as field workers would clock in using the JobClock System, Exatime’s time and attendance system designed for use in the field. The system includes portable devices (JobClock and PocketClock/GPS) that […]

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, speaking in Atlantic City on April 6, added more hot air to the discussion about offshore wind when he stated that windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, of the coal-fired power plants in the U.S. I’m disappointed Salazar didn’t take a few minutes for fact-checking and back-of-the-envelope ciphering before his speech.

Australia, the world’s second-largest exporter of thermal coal and uranium, and a significant exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), faces inevitable electricity rationing and the threat of blackouts unless the government acts urgently to ensure large-scale investments are made in new power-generating capacity, experts from five nations said in April. The Australian Academy for Technology […]

Newport Corp. introduced the 1928-C Single-Channel Benchtop Optical Meter, a compact and versatile power meter that provides an affordable alternative to customers looking for a single-channel benchtop energy/power measurement tool. The new model interfaces with all of Newport’s photodiode detectors, thermopiles, and pyroelectric detectors. It has the capability of measuring from 11 pW up to […]

Microbe Turns Carbon Dioxide into Methane A team of Penn State engineers say that a tiny self-perpetuating microbe can take electricity and directly convert carbon dioxide and water into methane, potentially producing a portable energy source with a carbon-neutral footprint. Methanogenic microorganisms produce methane in marshes and dumps, but scientists thought that the organisms turned […]

Denmark’s Risø DTU National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy in late April announced it had connected the world’s first polymer solar cell plant to the grid. The achievement follows years of research into the novel photovoltaic (PV) technology that has been touted as a future inexpensive, flexible, and customizable alternative to silicon crystal solar cells. The […]

Q: What do you get when you gather roughly two dozen top researchers from academia, government, and industry to speak on interdisciplinary energy-related issues for a week?
A: A lot of informative but crowded slides, high-octane brain power, fact-based analysis of where we are and we’re headed globally, informed questions, and surprisingly practical answers.

Southern California Edison’s (SCE) 2,250-MWe San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) recently took receipt of a new and upgraded generator rotor for one of its two Alstom steam turbine generator units (Figure 1). Following the successful installation and flawless start-up of this new rotor in the Unit 2 generator, the former Unit 2 rotor was […]