A Michigan utility will build a $500 million natural gas-fired power plant on the site of an existing coal-fired plant in Lansing, and plans to retire the coal plant and another coal-fired facility in the town in the next few years. Lansing’s Board of Water & Light (BWL) announced the project December 18. The city-owned […]

A utility group on December 18 agreed to keep a coal-fired power plant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, open for at least a few more years, and its members said they are prepared to move forward with distributed generation and could import power to make up for the eventual retirement of the Martin Drake Power Plant. […]

A test plant that will be part of research into producing cleaner-burning coal for power plants is set to begin operation next year in Wyoming, with the company behind the project saying global demand for coal makes the project viable even as the U.S. reduces its reliance on coal for electricity production. Clean Coal Technologies […]

Oman recently began operating a Wärtsilä-built power plant in the northern part of the country, part of more than $1 billion in power and energy projects being developed in the Arab nation. The Musandam Independent Power Project (IPP) is a 120-MW natural gas-fired plant (Figure 1) that can use light fuel oil as a secondary […]

A report released December 14 by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) says power generation from natural gas-fired units and renewable sources such as solar and wind will provide enough electricity to offset the closures of U.S. coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the next decade. The agency’s 10-year outlook, part of its 2017 […]

The Georgia Public Service Commission on December 11 said it will decide December 21 whether to allow construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle site to move forward, or call for the project to be canceled. Commissioners voted Monday to move up the timetable for a decision on the troubled nuclear project […]

Hearings on the future of the Vogtle nuclear expansion project are underway in Atlanta, Georgia, and events of the past few days could impact how quickly the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) and Georgia Power reach a decision on whether construction of two new nuclear reactors continues or is halted. This week’s hearings, which are […]

Kevin McIntyre was sworn in as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on December 7, just more than a month after his nomination to the post was approved by the Senate. He takes over from interim chair Neil Chatterjee, who will remain at FERC as a commissioner. The agency that regulates transmission and wholesale […]

General Electric (GE) said December 7 it will cut 12,000 jobs in its power unit as the company continues to struggle with changes in the global power market. The company in a statement said the staff reductions will save $1 billion in 2018. “Traditional power markets including gas and coal have softened,” the company said, […]

Toshiba Corp. has agreed to accelerate its payments to Georgia Power to help the utility finance completion of the troubled Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion. The deal announced December 5 comes four days after a recommendation from state regulators that the project be abandoned if Georgia Power cannot make it financially viable, and also to lessen […]

Austin, TX (Dec. 5, 2017) — Drillinginfo, the energy industry’s leading SaaS and data analytics company, announced today it has acquired Dallas-based Pattern Recognition Technologies (PRT), a global leader in energy forecasting. This acquisition marks a significant addition to Drillinginfo’s current offerings while diversifying its solution-focused capabilities as the foremost analytics firm in the energy […]

A new analysis by staff at Georgia’s Public Service Commission (PSC) says continuing construction of two AP1000 reactors at the Plant Vogtle nuclear facility near Waynesboro, Georgia, is not economic, and the group says that unless Georgia Power agrees to modify its conditions for completing the project to ensure it will be financially viable, the […]

Baltimore, Maryland (Dec. 4, 2017) – Governor Larry Hogan today announced that the State of Maryland, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, and Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), have reached a $161.1 million settlement agreement in the proposed merger of Washington Gas and Light’s parent company, WGL Holdings with AltaGas, Ltd. This settlement requires final […]

WEC Energy Group continues to move away from coal-fired power in its portfolio. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based utility in November gave WEC investors more details about the plan for Wisconsin Public Service (WPS), a WEC subsidiary, to close the Pulliam Power Plant in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as early as next fall. WEC subsidiary We Energies last […]

The Swiss company Climeworks in October said it had begun another round of testing for a direct air capture (DAC) facility at a 300-MW geothermal power plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland. Climeworks, which is

The state-owned North-West Power Generation Co. Ltd. (NWPGCL) in Bangladesh in early November announced plans to build a 3,600-MW regasification liquefied natural gas (LNG) combined cycle power plant in the

Construction Set to Begin on First Nuclear Plant in Turkey. Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, in mid-October said construction of the country’s first nuclear power plant would

The Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, part of a hydro-solar integration in the high desert on the Tibetan Plateau, has helped the country move toward its ambitious targets for increasing generation from cleaner fuel

Successfully designing and constructing a hydropower plant, while accounting for site space constraints and not disrupting commercial traffic on a busy waterway, presented challenges for a Midwestern utility

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) wants to sell Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility, even as state lawmakers discuss how to deal with the group’s involvement in the abandoned V.C. Summer nuclear project. Lawmakers also disagree with who should advise the state on a possible sale. Leaders of South Carolina’s House and Senate have hired […]

The bell has tolled for another U.S. coal-fired power plant. WEC Energy Group on November 28 said it would shutter its Pleasant Prairie facility in Wisconsin, another victim of energy market dynamics that include low natural gas prices, falling demand for electricity, and the continuing move by utilities toward renewable power generation sources such as […]

A U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysis of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2015 from U.S. coal consumption shows 43 states recorded lower emissions year-over-year, with just four states showing increased levels, while three states and the District of Columbia had little to no emissions. On the whole, the EIA report released in mid-November comparing […]

The fate of Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E’s) Diablo Canyon Power Plant is expected to be decided by year-end, with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) set to hear final arguments about the plant’s future on November 28. The 2.2-GW nuclear plant has operated near Avila Beach, California, since 1985. A judge in early November […]

U.S. utilities continue to announce closures of financially troubled and older coal-fired power plants even as government officials work on a bailout plan to keep them operating. Owners of a coal plant in Montana that has only been online since 2006 informed the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) last week of plans to shutter the […]

Siemens has announced it will cut 6,900 jobs, about half of them in Germany, over the next “several years” as the company consolidates its three power-related divisions. The November 16 announcement comes just days after U.S. power giant GE announced its own restructuring plan. Lisa Davis, a member of Siemens managing board, said in a […]

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Acting Chairman Neil Chatterjee, who has said he is “sympathetic” to a rule that would help prop up struggling U.S. coal and nuclear power plants, apparently is ready to move forward with an interim plan to keep financially troubled plants operating while his agency continues to consider a market-changing cost […]

Virginia regulators are ready to consider a proposal to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast, becoming the 10th state in the nation’s largest carbon-trading market. The move comes as newly elected governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, prepares to take office in a state where the Republican-led legislature has shot down previous […]

Utilities across the country are gearing up for an attack on the power grid November 15 and 16. Thankfully, it’s only a drill. But in the event of an actual emergency, a real physical and cyberattack on the U.S. electricity infrastructure, GridEx IV—a biennial exercise conducted by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC)—will help […]

ROCKLIN, Calif., November 14, 2017—SMA today announced that 13 Sunny Central Storage inverters are being used in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) Beacon Energy Storage System, a 20 MW battery storage project at the Beacon Solar Plant in the Mojave Desert. The new storage project will be owned and operated by […]

Officials in India say the the death toll from the November 1 explosion at an NTPC thermal plant in Unchahar has risen to 43, with seven more deaths reported in the past week. Dozens of workers at the plant were injured when flue gases and steam were released from a 500-MW coal-fired unit at the […]