Business

Russia and China have agreed to expand cooperation on nuclear energy, with Russia to build another two reactors in China in addition to expanding cooperation on fast-reactor technology and floating nuclear plants, Russia’s state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom said in a November 8 statement. The two nations, which share a 4,200-kilometer-long border, have worked together on […]

Southern Co. has once again moved back the in-service date for the Kemper County integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant under construction in Mississippi, this time to December 31, the company said in its quarterly report released on November 4. Though the plant has experienced ongoing construction delays for a variety of reasons, the most […]

TransCanada—a leading North American energy company—has struck deals to sell its U.S. Northeast Power business. LS Power will acquire three principally natural gas–fired power plants and a wind farm from TransCanada, while ArcLight Capital Partners will buy 13 hydropower facilities located in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. “The sale of our merchant U.S. Northeast Power […]

Although many observers consider Elon Musk—the visionary entrepreneur who leads Tesla Motors and SpaceX—to be a disruptive force threatening the conventional power industry, he believes power companies have a bright future, if his goal to expand the use of electric cars and install vast numbers of rooftop solar systems is achieved. Speaking during a presentation […]

The world’s first wind farms are reaching the end of their expected lifetimes. As they become outdated, or just inefficient, many developers are considering repowering. Here’s a look at where repowering activity is happening the most and why. Since the world’s first wind turbine used to convert wind energy into electricity was built by Professor […]

Vattenfall to Convert Berlin Coal Plants to Natural Gas. Sweden’s state-owned power company Vattenfall is phasing out the use of coal in Germany’s capital Berlin. The company on September 28 said it would

China is on an epic build-out of its nuclear generating capacity, and developing indigenous expertise and technology is central to that goal. The first completed plant leveraging the nation’s CPR-1000 design

Owner/operator: Exelon Generation and PSEG Nuclear/Exelon Generation When decision-makers choose to increase the maximum output of a nuclear power plant through an uprate, it sets in motion a process that can take many years and countless man-hours to complete. The success of Peach Bottom station’s extended power uprate project shows that all the long hours […]

As installed capacity in the U.S. continues its breakneck growth, the solar photovoltaic sector is poised for another leap forward with a variety of new technologies—if increasingly ill-suited regulations and rate designs can be updated to keep pace. The global solar market has moved beyond its early, uncertain days. The luxury of behaving like start-ups […]

A group of generators including Dynegy and NRG Energy filed suit in federal court on October 19 seeking to block an incentive program that would help three New York nuclear power plants remain economic over the next decade. An August decision by the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) approving New York’s Clean Energy Standard included a provision requiring […]

German utility RWE warned energy markets this week that low water levels on the Rhine River may affect the delivery of hard coal to some of its plants.

Watts Bar Unit 2 began commercial operation on October 19.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) voted unanimously to support Xcel Energy’s latest long-range plan, which will transform the company’s energy fleet. Xcel expects to more than double its renewable energy portfolio as a result, delivering greater than 60% carbon-free energy to its Upper Midwest (Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) customers by […]

Dreams of a future of round-the-clock dispatchable solar energy may have become reality at the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada.

Mississippi Power’s integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant under construction in Kemper County, Miss., will likely be placed in service by November 30, a month later than anticipated. The delay will be costly. Mississippi Power reached a new milestone on September 16, announcing that it had started producing syngas using the second gasifier—gasifier “A”—at […]

Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) will close the 620-MW Hudson Generation Station in Jersey City, N.J., and the 632-MW Mercer Generation Station in Hamilton Township, N.J., on June 1, 2017. “The sustained low prices of natural gas have put economic pressure on these plants for some time. In that context, we could not justify the […]

Big or small? Centralized or distributed? The answer, at least for energy storage, may be both, but what that future may be is unclear, if early discussions at the Energy Storage North America (ESNA) conference in San Diego October 4–6 are anything to go by. Speaking on the first night’s opening keynote panel, Colin Cushnie, […]

Under a government decree published in early August, Russia will build up to 11 new nuclear reactors by 2030, including two BN-1200 sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactors. Russia already has 36 operating reactors

Like so many other power plant functions these days, regulatory and standards compliance can be automated. Know what you want an automated system to do before you make a vendor decision. As North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) enforcement deadlines and audit dates loom—notably, CIP-003-6 in April 2017, which addresses the […]

South Africa’s state-owned utility faces recent generation shortages, plant construction problems, load shedding, and uncertainty at the African continent’s only nuclear power plant. And that’s just on the generation side. Moves on the business planning and regulatory side are painfully slow and could, some argue, be writing the utility’s obituary. Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned monopoly […]

Look to the East and you’ll see a major initiative to transform New York’s electric grid into a cleaner, more efficient system. Look to the West and you’ll find ambitious clean energy legislation in California. Yet utility executives and federal regulators recently gathered in the Midwest to highlight how this region is ground zero for […]

For all the words published over the past several years about electric utility customer defection—thanks to the combination of lower-cost residential solar photovoltaic systems, tax incentives, and net

Mexico to Launch Pilot Carbon Trade Program. Mexico will launch a yearlong simulation of a cap-and-trade program this November. The pilot program will involve up to 60 companies, allowing them to adapt a

States, regulators, and market participants have in recent years called attention to a trend concerning uneconomic baseload generation in organized wholesale markets, specifically in ISO New England, New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), MISO, PJM, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). Cheap natural gas, low power demand […]

In an effort to become a fully regulated power company, American Electric Power (AEP) has agreed to sell four Midwestern power plants—representing a total of 5.2 GW—to a newly formed joint venture of Blackstone and ArcLight Capital Partners for about $2.17 billion.  AEP will sell: the 1,186-MW natural gas–fired Lawrenceburg Generating Station in Lawrenceburg, Ind. […]

The $23.8 billion Hinkley Point C nuclear project has received the UK government’s green light, but the country wants to ensure that project’s ownership cannot change without government agreement. After a “comprehensive review” of the project and a revised agreement with French power generator EDF, the UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial (DBEI) Strategy […]

A strategy rolled out by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of the Interior (DOI) to enable 86 GW of offshore wind capacity in the U.S. by 2050 highlights a number of key hurdles, including those related to technology, regulations, the environment, and markets. The DOE’s and DOI’s September 9–released joint document, “National Offshore […]

NRG Energy has taken action to acquire 2.1 GW of utility-scale wind and solar assets owned by bankrupt renewables giant SunEdison with a $144 million auction bid this week. New Jersey–based NRG Energy on Sept. 12 executed a purchase and sale agreement (PSA) to take on 200 MW of SunEdison’s construction-ready, fully contracted solar assets […]

Duke Energy Renewables, part of Duke Energy’s Commercial Portfolio, announced on September 7 that it will add six Georgia solar projects to the 2.8-GW renewable energy portfolio the company owns and operates. The projects are relatively small in terms of capacity—averaging about 1 MW DC each (769 kW AC)—but they are the first Duke Energy […]

If wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) penetrations in the Eastern Interconnection were amped up to 30%, they would decrease coal, combined cycle, and combustion turbine capacity factors by 30% to 50%, a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) suggests. The study, NREL’s Eastern Renewable Generation Integration Study (ERGIS), was released on August […]