By J. Bennett Johnston It is fashionable these days for policymakers, particularly those running for office, to somberly suggest that America needs an energy policy—thus implying that America has no energy policy. As one of the prime architects of an energy policy that has served America well, I could not disagree more. The fact that […]

—Dr. Robert Peltier, PE Editor-in-Chief Ever wonder why many utilities receive so little respect from the public? In America, open competition requires every business to earn customers’ trust before making a sale. Unfortunately, many utilities exploit their monopoly position to avoid the hazards of competition, including losses. It’s no wonder that public utilities, as a […]

DOE scraps FutureGen / U.S. nuclear plants have record year / Westinghouse wins TVA contract / UniStar Nuclear to file for COL / AEP ranks second in U.S. construction / China moving to the driver’s seat / New solar cycle poses risks / Dutch favor power from natural gas / POWER digest / Corrections

New CIP standards leave questions unanswered/Solving common analyzer problems/Qualifying rebuild shops

  Renewable power proponents exuded great confidence as the U.S. Congress approached its near-annual end-of-year task of extending the production tax credit (PTC) for wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal power beyond its current December 2008 expiration. The debate promised to bypass the threshold issue of simply extending the PTC. It was expected to focus on […]

An optimal coal pile design takes into account the site-specific (and often conflicting) needs of a new power plant early in its design — rather than using whatever land is available after the plant layout has been finalized. Determining site requirements necessitates a detailed analysis of all potential coal-fueling options. A coal pile designer should […]

Three of the best-kept secrets in the U.S. today have nothing to do with national security in the traditional sense. They all involve costs: the cost of fulfilling campaign promises, a valid estimate of the cost of carbon control legislation (S. 2191) expected to reach the Senate floor in a few months, and the real […]

The Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, announced in March that CO 2 emissions from U.S. power plants increased 2.9% last year over 2006 levels. The group used 2006 and 2007 CO 2 emissions data from the U.S. EPA and the DOE’s Energy Information Administration. It’s hard to normalize CO 2 numbers — and […]

Everyone in the power generation business knows that coal will continue to be a necessary fuel source for the foreseeable future. Many of those same people are beginning to understand that, politics aside, coal plant operations in the foreseeable future won’t look like the operations of yesterday or today. But what exactly will the future […]

In recent years, Sargent & Lundy has evaluated many potential sites for new coal-fueled generation. Some of the sites studied were lands adjacent to existing power plants (brownfield sites); others were undeveloped greenfield sites. The numerous technical, environmental, economic, and regulatory issues that bear on power plant siting generally apply to both brownfield and greenfield […]