“I hate to see things going out along party lines,” Cheryl LaFleur, outgoing commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), told POWER during an exclusive interview. “During my 35 years of watching FERC, that has not been the pattern.” During the early years of the Obama administration, “we didn’t think of ourselves as [partisan],” […]

August 21, 2019 Group Will Build ‘First of its Kind’ Pumped-Storage Project in Dubai The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has awarded a Dh1.437 billion ($391 million) construction contract for a 250-MW hydropower project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a project considered… Read More Biomass Power: Stalled in the Market, Stalled in Washington […]

GSE Systems said it has delivered and commissioned three additional full-scope simulators for Southern Nuclear’s new Operations Training Centers. The simulators are for the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant, and the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant. Simulators provide efficient hands-on learning for power plant operators. While power plants of […]

Xcel Energy’s effort to purchase a 760-MW natural gas combined cycle facility in Mankato, Minnesota, from Southern Power, a wholesale energy provider and subsidiary of Southern Company, is meeting resistance from two state agencies. The Minnesota Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Minnesota Office of the Attorney General (OAG) recommended the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission […]

August 14, 2019 Automated Plant Startups Reduce Fixed and Fuel-Related Costs State-of-the-art automation systems are common at power plants these days. Still, many plants start up units in a very manual way. When startups were rare, the implications were minimal, but as units cycle… Read More PG&E Asks Bankruptcy Judge to Back Restructured Power Deals […]

Today’s heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) are suffering reliability problems, mainly because they’re being operated in the cycling mode instead of the baseload mode for which they were designed. The good news is HRSG suppliers are adapting to the market demands and are designing the next generation of HRSGs to have cycling-friendly—also called fast-start—features. One […]

August 7, 2019 Healy 2: The Story of a Coal Unit's Remarkable Resiliency Coal is the reason that Healy, Alaska, exists. To ensure low-cost power and reliability to interior Alaska—a remote place that is bereft of gas and has little sun—and sustain regional employment, Golden Read More Sponsored Content See $500,000 in Savings With a […]

Renewable energy and battery storage are hot topics in the U.S. today. Lawmakers throughout the country debated various new energy policies during the 2019 legislative session. Nevada is among the states leading the way forward. Several new laws were passed in the state that will affect power companies and consumers for years to come. Curt […]

August 1, 2019 Vogtle Nuclear Expansion Unlikely to Meet Aggressive Schedule Deadline A team that reviewed Southern Nuclear Company's (SNC’s) April 2019 Vogtle Units 3 and 4 Re-baseline of Forecast Schedule and Cost said it believes the working schedule predicated on commercial… Read More The POWER Interview: What Drove the Gas Turbine Technology Leap at […]

A team that reviewed Southern Nuclear Company’s (SNC’s) April 2019 Vogtle Units 3 and 4 Re-baseline of Forecast Schedule and Cost said it believes the working schedule predicated on commercial operation dates of May 23, 2021, and May 23, 2022, for the respective units, is unachievable. Furthermore, the reviewers said the regulatory-approved schedule from the […]