POWER

Last October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced that it was seeking a record $470 million penalty against Barclays Bank for manipulating California energy markets for several years in the late 2000s. The amount includes a $435 million fine as well as disgorgement of $35 million in profits Barclays gained from allegedly illegal trading. In addition, FERC levied hefty fines against several individual Barclays traders.

As the book title Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Fiascoes, Dead Ends, and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy implies, nuclear power has traveled a rough road. In this POWER exclusive, we present the 14th and 15th chapters, “A Man, a Plan, a Canal” and “The End of the Exploding Game,” the final two chapters of “Eddie Teller’s Exploding Ambitions” section.

Improper layup practices are a major contributor to boiler tube failures and to steam turbine pitting and cracking in U.S. fossil plants. EPRI’s research into identifying damage mechanisms, utility best practices, and innovative new methods to protect plant equipment during outages will aid plant operators in achieving a successful layup.

Many recent utility greenfield and rehabilitation power projects have incorporated plant automation, with the goal of reducing the number of operators needed. The essential design principle is to specify control systems and field devices that will achieve the desired operational regime. Here’s how it’s done “Down Under.”

The increased use of intermittent renewable energy sources and the shift to gas-fired combustion turbines places new burdens on the dispatch of many coal-fired units. Steam units must now operate at very low minimum load while maintaining the ability to ramp up and down quickly. High-pressure feedwater heater energy control can improve the system response of such coal-fired units.

Mismatched or poorly maintained temperature sensors and thermowells can cause an often-unrecognized error in steam temperature measurement. The problem is often recognized only when sluggish steam temperature response times are noticed. Recent tests suggest some simple ways to resolve the problem.

Many power plants have sediment retention ponds that require control of pH for the effluent. The following guidelines for fossil plant sediment pond pH control will help you design a robust system while staying within budget.

Development of a $3.2 billion circulating fluidized bed (CFB) petroleum coke–fired power plant proposed for construction in Corpus Christi, Texas, was suspended last week. Chase Power Development, parent company of the 1,300-MW Las Brisas Energy Center, cited market conditions and regulatory obstacles for its decision.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last week declined petitions for rehearing en banc of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). The federal court’s denial of the petitions leaves in place the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR)—a Bush-era rule that the court had formerly invalidated in July 2008 and then reinstated. It also could prompt environmental groups, 15 states, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mississippi regulators last week approved a settlement with Mississippi Power that will allow the Southern Co. subsidiary to seek higher customer rates for rising costs associated with its 582-MW Kemper integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant under construction in Kemper County. On the day following that ruling, the utility asked the state for permission to recover $172 million for the 2013 regulatory year.

A settlement agreement reached with environmental group the Sierra Club last week may mean that Iowa’s largest utility, MidAmerican Energy Co., will switch 674 MW of coal-fired capacity to natural gas or other fuels by April 2016.

Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) Industry Alliance last week announced that it had received a $1 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a 50/50 cost-shared contract to continue business and economic analysis for using high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technologies (HTGR).

The UK’s process to site a deep geological repository for radioactive waste in West Cumbria screeched to a halt on Wednesday after the Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet decided that the region should no longer be considered as a potential location to host the facility, even though the local government of the borough of Copeland voted in favor of the plans.

A German tax court on Tuesday ruled that the country’s excise tax on nuclear fuel levied since January 2011 is unconstitutional and lacks legal competence. The matter now proceeds to the Federal Constitutional Court, which alone has the jurisdiction to rule on the invalidity of the law.

A year after the beleaguered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) was shut down owing to issues identified in the steam generator tubes of the plant’s two units, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced tentative milestones for its independent review. The federal agency now projects that a possible decision regarding restart of Unit 2 could come in late April.

Average spot natural gas prices in New England have surged to $3 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) higher than natural gas prices at the Henry Hub since November, driven up by supply constraints from natural gas pipelines that haven’t kept up with demand, high international prices, and declining production in eastern Canada, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says in a report released last week.

Wisconsin Energy nearly doubled its natural gas burn for power generation in 2012, from 23.9 billion cubic feet (bcf) in 2011 to 46.5 bcf in 2012. Gale Klappa, CEO, said during a January 30 earnings conference call that natural gas units at the company’s 1,150-MW Port Washington generating station operated at a 46% capacity factor in 2012. This compares with a 23% capacity factor in 2011.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule in December that strengthens its National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to 12.0 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m³) but declared it would not finalize a proposal to update separate secondary PM2.5 standards. The final rule’s issuance was lauded by environmental and public health groups, though industry groups opposed it, citing concerns that nonattainment areas would suffer economic setbacks.

Fuel for power generation will account for about 55% of demand-related energy growth through 2040, ExxonMobil forecasts in its latest annual energy forecast. Like several other forecasters, the Irving, Texas–based oil and gas company also predicts that natural gas will emerge as the leading source of electricity generation by 2040.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Dec. 20 finalized changes to a specific set of adjustments to the Clean Air Act that apply to coal, oil, natural gas, and biomass boilers and certain solid waste incinerators.

Embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced her resignation on December 27 citing the pursuit of “new challenges” and “opportunities to make a difference” as the reasons for leaving her high-profile post. I suspect her departure was caused less by altruism and more by self-preservation.

The world’s first supercritical pulverized coal–fired low mass flux vertical tube Benson boiler is Jinzhushan 3, located in the Hunan Province of the People’s Republic of China. The 600-MW Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group Inc. once-through boiler burns Chinese anthracite using downshot pulverized coal (PC) technology. Part 1 of this three-part article presented a summary of the project design features. Part 2 discussed the boiler technology. This third and final part reviews the plant’s performance test results.

Proposed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules and a greater reliance on newer generation technologies have put the nation’s aging fossil-fueled generation units at risk of retirement. The numbers demonstrate that the U.S. power generating fleet is older than you may believe.

An open letter published in the Washington Examiner by a group of climate scientists and meteorologists states why they believe the theory of anthropogenic warming is far from settled science and the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have disregarded established methods of scientific inquiry.

Interest in a carbon tax seems to be growing in Washington as a means to increase revenue for the federal government and to fight climate change. There are three good reasons why instituting a carbon tax is a very bad idea.

While the war on coal is working to reduce coal generation and consumption and associated carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, many world economies are looking toward coal for future generation needs. China, India, Russia, and Germany, to name a few, are building coal-fired power plants.

Among the surprises in President Barack Obama’s second Inaugural Address on Monday was his promise to address the challenges of climate change and sustainable energy. An independent draft report released about a week earlier on climate change and its impacts in the U.S. may have helped to fuel his renewed resolve on these intertwined issues.

A federal court on Tuesday ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exceeded its authority when it established a screening tool that could allow some new power plants to be exempted from certain requirements under the EPA’s October 2010-finalized rule aimed at curbing emissions of particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

A proposal released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday could require owners of the 2.3-GW coal-fired Navajo Generating Station (NGS) near the Arizona-Utah state line to install emission controls worth $1.1 billion to improve visibility at 11 national parks and wilderness areas in the Southwest.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Friday narrowly approved a determination that U.S. industry is materially injured or threatened with material injury by imports of unfairly subsidized utility-scale wind towers from China and Vietnam. The ITC’s determination gives the Department of Commerce the green light to issue antidumping and countervailing duty orders on imports of those products from the two countries.