Russia’s new nuclear navy;Russia’s old nuclear navy; First LMS100 fired up by Basin Electric;More Jenbacher gensets to Hungary; A baseload-size wind farm?; EEI bestows Edison Awards; POWERnotes
 

New York City has an insatiable appetite for power, but supplying that power from plants inside the city’s five boroughs (where 80% of its peak demand must come from) is tough. So it’s nothing short of miraculous that a 500-MW combined-cycle plant in Astoria, Queens, began commercial operation at the end of 2005. What did it take to bring this plant on-line? The largest state-owned power organization in the U.S.—The New York Power Authority.

The latest benchmarking study by the EUCG examines the engineering and technical staffing of 62 plants, 92% of which burn coal. If you benchmark your units, plants, or fleet, the results may raise some eyebrows. But they also may help justify your plea for more intellectual capital during the upcoming budgeting cycle. Though the detailed results of the study are proprietary to EUCG member companies that participated in it, POWER was given access to the complete findings. If you want details at the plant/unit level, you’ll have to join the EUCG and participate in the study, which is ongoing.

We tend to forget that today’s super-sized power plant designs began life as small prototypes that grew in size only as fast as technology and economics allowed. Arizona Public Service, a long-time leader in solar energy development, has invested in the development of one such technology that is compatible with the sunny Southwest and certain to become more cost-competitive in the near future. This successful demonstration of a 1-MW concentrated solar power, trough-style energy system is the first to have put power on the grid since 1988. But it certainly won’t be the last.

This year’s main course, as usual, was instrumentation and controls. Side dishes of digital nuclear plant controls, plant controller and IT security, corrosion monitoring, and model predictive control added their own distinctive flavors. There was something for every taste, from the theoretical to the practical.

Beer drinkers know and love Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s dedication to bottling premium beers, and that commitment has earned it numerous tasting awards. But it would also win awards on the basis of using clean, high-tech brewing technologies. Sierra Nevada has chosen to minimize its environment footprint by investing in a reuse/reduce/recycle beer-making process. The company has found a way to make its "closed-cycle brewery" a good corporate citizen without compromising bottom-line results.

Participants in the CEO Roundtable at Electric Power 2006 raised a plethora of issues affecting decisions on future electric power generation. Representing a cross section of power producers, the industry leaders made clear that, although globalization has lost its luster in the power generation sector, its impact on the domestic industry remains profound. Ten years […]

If coal is to be “America’s energy future” (see p. 42), the work of the Powder River Basin Coal Users’ Group (PRBCUG) will have a lot to do with making it so. Since 1999, the PRBCUG (see sidebar) has fostered the safe, efficient, and cost-effective use of the fuel as it watched its membership swell […]

The third annual meeting of the Combined Cycle Users’ Group (CCUG) was held May 2–4 in Atlanta at Electric Power 2006, in cooperation with the ASME Power Division Combined Cycles Committee and other industry groups. The CCUG’s leadership (Figure 1) drives the group to address issues involving the major components of a combined-cycle plant and […]

Five years ago, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 3 turbine experienced substantial damage after the supply of oil to its bearings failed. Because the turbine coasted down without oil after it tripped, its bearings, journals, and steam path needed extensive repairs. A follow-up investigation revealed lube oil system vulnerabilities that were subsequently corrected. The lessons learned might also improve your turbine-generators’ lube oil reliability, saving you many millions in lost revenues.