POWER

Cost overruns of nearly $1 billion to build the 582-MW Kemper integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant in Kemper County, Miss., were underscored on Monday as Mississippi Power’s Board of Directors took the dramatic step of replacing the Southern Co. subsidiary’s leadership.

A carbon tax or cap-and-trade programs could raise trillions of dollars within the first 10 years of their enactment and avert climate change effects, but without accounting for how these revenues will be used, they could take a toll on the U.S. economy, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says in a report released on Tuesday.

Panelists at a House hearing on Tuesday held to examine steps the federal government and private sector are taking to bolster the nation’s critical infrastructure security shed light on the extent and variety of possible cyberattacks and called for flexible solutions. The hearing was held days after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its initial analysis of hundreds of comments submitted in response to President Obama’s February 2013 cybersecurity executive order.

A final rule issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday orders the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) to develop, by the end of the year, reliability standards that address the impact of geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) on the nation’s bulk power system. Those standards will likely require generators and grid operators to develop and implement operational procedures and conduct continuing assessments on equipment to mitigate GMD effects.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), in a special reliability assessment released on Wednesday, called for a number of changes to address the increased reliance on natural gas for power generation, among them incorporating gas availability and gas supply issues into electric reliability assessments.

Freeport LNG Expansion LP and FLNG Liquefaction LLC received conditional authorization on May 17 to export U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Freeport LNG Terminal on Quintana Island, Texas, making it the second project to receive federal approval. Meanwhile, Canada is considering a proposed LNG export terminal in British Columbia.

A promising new approach to securing communications networks from cyber crime uses quantum cryptography. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have developed a system that could be used for critical infrastructure control systems, including those at power plants.

An updated fracking rule proposed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) last week maintains a number of requirements from a previous draft—including that well operators should disclose all chemicals used in fracturing activities on public lands—but it will improve integration with state and tribal standards and increase compliance flexibility, the agency said.

The full Senate last week confirmed Ernest Moniz as Energy Secretary while a divided Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) voted 10–8 to send the nomination of Gina McCarthy as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. Republicans agreed to lift their boycott on the McCarthy vote only after the EPA agreed to meet a number of transparency commitments.

In an apparent legal victory for developers of new nuclear power plants in the U.S., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied complaints from environmental groups that federal approval of Southern Co.’s two new reactors under construction in Georgia did not address lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.

AES Corp.’s subsidiary Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) plans to retire six coal-fired units representing about 390 MW at its 414-MW Hutchings coal-, gas-, and oil-fired plant in Miamisburg, Ohio, by June 2015 as a result of existing and expected environmental regulations, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). The news comes on the heels of Indianapolis Power & Light Co.’s (IPL’s) announcement that it plans to retire 600 MW of coal-fired capacity to comply with environmental rules.

Plans to build an 873-MW natural gas peaking facility at FirstEnergy’s Eastlake Plant in Ohio have been frozen on uncertainties that affect project financing—including the federal "sequester"—its developers FirstEnergy and American Municipal Power (AMP) said last week.

Sempra U.S. Gas & Power dedicated the first 150-MW phase of the 4,000-acre Mesquite Solar facility in Maricopa County, Ariz., on Friday. Potential to build out up to 700 MW of nameplate capacity could make the photovoltaic (PV) complex one of the biggest in the U.S.

In a report released on Monday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) presents data on energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for each state by year, fuel, sector, and other breakouts for the years 2000 through 2010.

A three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) on Tuesday ruled that Southern California Edison (SCE) cannot restart Unit 2 of its shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) until the NRC holds a formal license amendment proceeding with full public participation.

Westinghouse and China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC) have teamed to further develop a supply chain within China for power plant equipment and components to be used in global AP1000 nuclear power plants.

A software algorithm developed by researchers from North Carolina State University promises to detect and isolate cyber attacks on networked control systems.

A three-judge panel at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit that alleges carbon dioxide emissions by several power companies contributed to global warming that intensified Hurricane Katrina.

In an effort to create more jobs, the Obama administration is launching competitions to create three new manufacturing innovation institutes with a federal commitment of $200 million across five agencies: Defense, Energy, Commerce, NASA, and the National Science Foundation.  The energy-related institute will focus on next-generation power electronics manufacturing.

Air Products and Chemicals hydrogen production facilities in Port Arthur, Texas, have successfully begun capturing carbon dioxide from industrial operations and are now using that carbon for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The $431 million project, supported by $284 million from the Department of Energy (DOE), is being touted as a milestone in carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) for progressing beyond demonstration to industrial scale.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced on May 9 that it will hold a commission meeting on May 16 to address the difficulties posed by inadequate alignment between how natural gas and electricity markets operate.

Five companies have filed letters of intent with North Dakota’s Public Service Commission (PSC) outlining proposals to start construction this year on wind farms that would add almost 686 MW of wind power capacity.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) said on May 6 that the continuing shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) heightens reliability concerns for areas of Southern California this summer.

Domestic content requirements that require some generators to source up to 60% of equipment from the Canadian province of Ontario under its feed-in-tariff (FIT) program are inconsistent with international trade rules, officials from the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) highest court said on Monday.

A bipartisan group of senators last week asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to vet just how feasible the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is, and how its costs could affect other U.S. fusion programs.

Dominion on Tuesday permanently shuttered its 556-MW Kewanee nuclear plant located about 40 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wis. The 40-year-old Westinghouse pressurized water reactor generated 148 million MWh over its lifetime.

Panelists at a House hearing today refuted varied claims concerning if and how increased natural gas and renewables generation pose widespread challenges to the reliability of the electric grid. Some pointed to ineffective rules in the restructured wholesale power market and the failure of conventional power plants as being more of a threat to grid reliability.

Duke Energy said on May 2 that it told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) it plans to suspend its application for two proposed new nuclear units on its Harris site near New Hill in Wake County, North Carolina.

President Barack Obama said in a speech that the U.S. is likely to be a net exporter of natural gas by 2020, the Financial Times newspaper reported May 6. The newspaper said the president’s remarks, which were made in Costa Rica, are the strongest signal yet that the administration is leaning toward supporting export ventures.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Itochu Corp., along with France’s GDF Suez, will build a 4,800-MW nuclear power plant at an estimated cost of $22 billion under an agreement signed May 3.