Business

Microgrids have been around for decades, but today, more potential customers, owners, technologies, and vendors than ever are part of the market. Increased interest in this special grid resource means there’s more competition, which is generally a good thing, but there are also new challenges. “You have to have some serious staying power” to be […]

Dominion Resources, a large electric and gas utility holding company serving mostly Virginia and North Carolina, has big ambitions to spread its wings nationally and internationally in gas, while carefully hedging its electricity business. The company’s strategy is eclectic. “Eclectic.” Miriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, defines the word as “1: selecting what appears to be […]

GE is doubling down on industrial markets, as its efforts to acquire the drilling unit of Halliburton and its two acquisitions in the power space this month demonstrate.

Executives from power companies operating in different markets revealed how their firms are being affected by low natural gas prices, pressures to achieve fuel diversity, distributed energy generation, and lax demand growth, among a number of topics. The annual executive roundtable panel at the ELECTRIC POWER Conference and Exhibition on April 19 was moderated by […]

  Even if the Clean Power Plan (CPP) doesn’t overcome legal challenges, it is likely that many states will implement carbon-curbing measures set down by the rule, some panelists said at the Environmental Mega Session at the ELECTRIC POWER 2016 conference in New Orleans on April 19. The Rule’s Shaky Legal Standing The rule is […]

The volume and value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the first quarter of this year have soared, according to the accounting and financial consulting firm PwC. According to PwC’s quarterly snapshot, American Power & Utilities Deals: Q1 2016, “The first quarter was the most active for power and utilities in recent history, with 22 […]

Two senior power sector executives opened the 2016 ELECTRIC POWER Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans April 19 with a message that generators need to “think big” and embrace possibilities of disruptive technologies—or risk being run over on the road to the future. Leo Denault, chairman and CEO of Entergy Corp., delivered the opening keynote […]

In April’s editorial, “When Technology Tails Wag Power Dogs,” Editor Gail Reitenbach mused about whether the use of captured carbon dioxide (CO2) for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) represents a viable way forward for carbon capture, use, and sequestration (CCUS). This is a subject both of us have covered in various ways over the past few […]

A plan to restructure $9 billion in Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) debt—an eighth of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s staggering $72 billion in debt—surfaced at the U.S. territory’s energy regulator, the Puerto Rico Energy Commission last week on April 7.

In a joint report issued April 5, a group of California agencies and utilities said that if the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility north of Los Angeles cannot be returned to service after a major leak this past winter, repeated gas curtailments could occur this summer, leading to significant loss of generating capacity in Southern […]

In what has become a regular occurrence with the Kemper County integrated gasification combined cycle power plant, Mississippi Power announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1 that costs have risen from the most recent projections and further delays in its in-service date are possible. Though the $18 million in […]

Setting the stage for a drawn-out fight with ratepayer groups and other generators, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) on March 31 approved proposals from FirstEnergy and American Electric Power (AEP) that will provide guaranteed income to FirstEnergy’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant (Figure 1) and several aging coal-fired plants belonging to it and AEP. 1. […]

Shamelessly adapting the great British novelist Charles Dickens, for the global nuclear industry, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times; it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness; it is

Entergy Corp., a dominant investor-owned utility in the middle south, hugging the Mississippi River drainage area from New Orleans to Memphis (including a piece of Texas), faces what may be a unique generation

When you hear “drone,” do you think, toy, military craft, dangerous device, or useful tool? Depending on the type of unmanned aircraft system (aka, drone) we’re talking about, any of those descriptors

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is obligated to review many different federal environmental standards on a recurring basis and update them if the agency deems it necessary for the protection of

Two renewables giants with a hefty global reach are facing debilitating financial crises. SunEdison on the Verge of Bankruptcy California-headquartered solar project developer SunEdison, a company that has 1,000 operational sites worldwide and is staffed by 3,000 employees, is facing a liquidity crisis so dire, the company’s yieldco TerraForm Global warned in a March 29 […]

A handful of attorneys general want to join forces on ongoing and potential investigations into whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public about the impact of climate change on their businesses. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced the joint effort on March 29, during a one-day climate change conference for attorneys […]

Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison (SCE), announced on March 29 that it’s launching a new business unit called Edison Energy that will provide energy consulting services to large energy consumers across the country to help them in identifying and exploiting opportunities to lower energy costs, reduce complexity of energy management, and meet […]

The Edison Electric Institute has come under fire for a new communications plan that was intended to depict utilities as more community-minded.

Challenge:
After a major refurbishment, a Canadian nuclear plant required additional process and boiler feed water for plant start-up and commissioning.
The plant’s raw water supply contained measurements ranging from 1-10 NTU, conductivity from 70-100 and color units ranging from 180-420. The plant also experienced highly variable flow rates, ranging from 0-600 GPM, and issues with the

Exelon’s acquisition of Pepco Holdings was approved March 23 as the District of Columbia Public Service Commission approved the deal by a 2-1 vote.

“My sense as I speak to you here today is that nuclear energy is toast,” said New York Times Reporter Eduardo Porter, as he opened a panel discussion titled “Nuclear Energy and the Clean Energy Future” held at the New York University School of Law on March 23. “Despite the challenge from climate change that […]

Whether utilities, technology providers, or independent third-party upstarts are best suited to create a reliable recipe for microgrid development remains an open question.

Although new microgrid configurations, technologies, and business models are still evolving in the U.S., some lessons have been learned in the past few years. Aside from the fact that financing nontraditional/non-campus microgrids is hard, if there’s one overarching lesson, it’s that a microgrid designed to provide only one benefit or rely on only one generation source is unlikely to succeed.

Challenge
A global polymer producer located in Ohio sought to improve the annual outage cleaning of its heat exchangers.
Historically, industrial cleaning contractors hand lanced the heat exchanger tubes, servicing four to six exchangers per night for two weeks to fit within the outage schedule. But often, multiple heat exchangers would require re-cleaning to allow for heat

The Cloud Advantage
6 Reasons Power Leaders are Moving to Cloud
Gaining business value from massive volumes of asset sensor datarequires a unique operating environment not typically part of the power infrastructure. What must power leaders consider when taking steps to transform their operations with data and analytics?
Discover the power of digital in the cloud in

Construction of a 50-MWt plant that will demonstrate a novel oxyfuel natural gas power system using Allam Cycle technology with zero atmospheric emissions has kicked off in La Porte, Texas. The demonstration plant is being built by the technology’s developer, Durham, N.C.–based NET Power, along with Exelon Generation, CB&I, and 8 Rivers Capital. NET Power’s […]

The 4-GW three-unit Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station has broken its own generation record, producing the highest electricity output of any nuclear plant in the world. APS, the Arizona utility that operates the plant, said Palo Verde generated 32.5 million MWh in 2015, making it still the only U.S. power plant to ever produce more […]

Distributed energy firm Vivint Solar has terminated an agreement under which it would have merged with renewables giant SunEdison in a $2.2 billion deal. The Lehi, Utah–based company told investors on March 8 that it had delivered a letter notifying SunEdison that the merger agreement had been terminated, owing to SunEdison’s “failure to meet obligations” […]