NRG Energy Inc. on Sunday rejected Exelon Corp.’s $6.08 billion acquisition offer—a merger deal that would have created the single largest power company in the U.S.—saying that the “opportunistically timed proposal grossly undervalues” the company. Stressing that the offer was unsolicited, the company’s board of directors unanimously agreed that Exelon’s Oct. 19 proposal significantly undervalued […]

Maryland’s Public Service Commission (PSC) has ordered the state’s utilities to find ways to generate more power to avoid shortfalls and possible brownouts or blackouts predicted to hit the state between 2011 and 2012. In 2007, and this past May 2008, PJM Interconnection, the region’s grid operator, told the PSC that Maryland could face electricity shortages—and […]

The Department of Energy is hoping to expand the capacity of the $90 billion Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada—a facility that President-elect Barack Obama has consistently said he opposes—instead of building a second repository, The New York Times reported last week. Edward F. Sproat III, director of the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive […]

British Petroleum (BP) has reportedly withdrawn all plans to build wind farms and other renewable projects in the UK, and it has dropped out of a government competition to build a carbon capture and storage plant. The Guardian reports that the company will instead concentrate its $8 billion renewable program on the U.S., attracted to […]

Widespread efforts aimed at reducing carbon emissions and increasing the use of renewables for the generation of electricity will fundamentally determine the future course of electric reliability across North America, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) said in a recently released report. “We are concerned that, when viewed from a continent-wide perspective, current climate […]

After two years of review, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) last week approved a final air permit for the Southwest Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO) John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant. With the permit, construction on the 600-MW coal-fired facility—one of the first U.S. coal plants to use ultrasupercritical technology—will begin immediately in Fulton, […]

By Kennedy Maize Nothing fails like success. Already, Democrats in Congress are at each others’ throats about sharing the spoils from the Obama victory. The most serious fight so far pits Hollywood liberal Henry Waxman against the long-time chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Democrat John Dingell of Michigan. Waxman has launched a […]

The more capable a power-generating unit is of reacting quickly to changes in load demand, the more profitably the unit can be operated. An improvement in load dynamics means that additional control response and capacity can be made available to the power grid. These characteristics are especially in demand in regions where a fast-responding unit can supply energy as ancillary services at a premium price.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, just released its report on the status of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology and its view of the technology’s future development challenges. In general, the GAO concludes that the technology faces grave technological, regulatory, economic, and legal barriers that will not be […]

Replacing existing, older-generation controlled-flow split-flame burners on Unit 1 at the Seminole Generating Station with Foster Wheeler’s new low-NO_x burners and overfire air additions reduced NO_x emissions. This case study provides all the details and post-installation test results.