Business

Bill Newsom—vice president, sales & marketing, Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas Inc.—talks about taking the long view with the company’s U.S. investments.

Dr. Michael Weinhold, chief technology officer of Siemens Energy, discusses the company’s 2011 business plans and the role of the smart grid in the future’s energy infrastructure.

The concept of a smart grid may have been born in the U.S.A., but it’s hitting an adolescent growth spurt just about everywhere else first. Meanwhile, in the U.S., both the regulators and companies that see great potential in a smarter grid are realizing that making substantial smart grid progress will first require making both people and policies smarter. There’s one exception, one piece of the smart grid, that could face fewer obstacles to adoption, and that’s because it offers more obvious and visible benefits to its users: electric vehicles (EVs).

TANE and Shaw to Provide EPC Services for South Texas Expansion. Nuclear Innovation North America LLC (NINA), the nuclear development company jointly owned by NRG Energy and Toshiba Corp., on Nov. 29 announced that it awarded the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for South Texas Projects Units 3 and 4 to a restructured EPC […]

Though electricity generation has entered a key period of transition—as investment shifts to low-carbon technologies—world electricity demand is set to grow faster than any other “final form of energy,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its latest annual World Energy Outlook.

Timothy Curran, head of power for Alstom Power, USA, recently shared his company’s view of 2011 and beyond with POWER’s editor-in-chief.

Experts have decried congressional and academic reliance on a mathematical model for understanding complex systems that suggests an attack on a small part of the U.S. power grid could disrupt the entire power system network.

Iberdrola Renovables Starts Up National Wind Turbine Control Center. Iberdrola Renovables, a company that owns 41 operating wind farms (3,900 MW in nameplate capacity) in the U.S., on Sept. 26 began operating its National Control Center (NCC), a facility based in Portland, Ore., that has operational control over some 800,000 inputs from 2,500 wind turbines […]

Survey wind turbine manufacturers about how to calculate wind farm availability and you will get countless different definitions and exceptions to the rule.

Feed-in tariffs (FITs) have been used by European countries to foster the growth of renewable generation resources, notably solar. These tariffs generally require electric distribution companies to purchase power produced by a specified class of generators at above-market rates. The object of the tariffs is to encourage development of the favored generation resources by ensuring the existence of a profitable market for their power production.

Recent mandates require government facilities to develop energy policies that enable energy conservation, increase the use of renewable energy, and improve energy security. Utilities with government facilities in their service territory may have opportunities to develop solar and other renewable energy projects that help them meet state renewable portfolio standards while increasing a government facility’s usage of renewable energy. The key to such a win-win proposition is careful structuring of the project agreement to leverage each party’s assets.

In 2010 investment in wind power continued to accelerate, particularly in California and Texas. California also entered several solar projects in the race for financing. The finish line that renewable power developers and their partners are racing to meet is a December 31 deadline to qualify for federal cash grants.

TVA’s 550-MW Combined-Cycle Plant Starts Operations. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on Sept. 30 officially began operating the Lagoon Creek Combined Cycle Plant, a 550-MW natural gas–fired plant, near Brownsville, Tenn. The federal utility said that the new plant, the first new power generation source built by TVA since 2002, would provide power during days […]

Business planning that doesn’t carefully consider workforce issues can result in economic and management headaches.

The Atomic Energy Act originally established the length of a U.S. commercial nuclear reactor license as 40 years and made it renewable for another 20 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stated that it bases the length of these licenses (and the 50+ renewed licenses granted to date) not on any particular technical limitation but on whether the plant meets current safety requirements. Does this mean there could be reactor life after 60?

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The EUCG Nuclear Committee’s primary goal is to optimize the costs and reliability performance of participating plants by publishing for its members a comprehensive database of performance metrics and best practices derived through surveys of its membership. Earlier reports examined staffing and performance data. In this exclusive EUCG report, we examine nuclear plant capital requirements.

Utilities are spending billions of dollars on nuclear plant uprate projects, and Southern Company has been offered $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees to build Vogtle Units 3 and 4 (although the final deal has yet to be signed). Meanwhile, other nuclear developers have slashed preconstruction spending as the cost of the “nuclear renaissance” becomes evident.

Presenters at the inaugural GridWise Global Forum in Washington, D.C., September 21 to 23 had a lot to say about the prospects for smarter grids. This synopsis of facts and opinions shared at the event, which attracted several smart grid A-listers, looks at the major challenges ahead, especially for the U.S.

Despite a trendy moniker and lots of hype and interest, the smart grid has been facing some major setbacks of late, as regulators and customers begin challenging some of the claims for what interconnected smart meters will deliver in the way of tangible benefits.

The prospects of a worldwide nuclear power renaissance have spawned many plans for increasing uranium enrichment capacity. Could those plans swamp the world in SWUs?

A sea change in thinking about how to deal with spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. appears to be on the policy and political horizon, rekindling battles last fought in the 1980s about how to pay for the disposal of nuclear waste and where to put it. Holes in the ground look increasingly unlikely.

Here’s how, with almost no attention, recent financial reform legislation changes how business must deal with whistleblower employees and affects other seemingly nongermane issues.

Turkey, a country that has long vied to become part of the European Union, is finally part of its grid, at least. The nation’s power system was synchronized with Continental Europe’s interconnected grid this September, marking the beginning of a year-long trial period in which security and performance will be monitored.

Letting loose on Facebook, Twitter, and email, no matter how tempting and satisfying, can be a prescription for big trouble for you and your organization. Watch out for the dangers of social media on the job.

News items of interest to power industry professionals.

It has been three years and a few months since the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Reliability Standards (Standards) became mandatory and noncompliance became subject to sanctions by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). You might assume that because we have had no further instances of widespread cascading outages that the Standards are working. You may also assume that—considering the database of documented noncompliance with the Standards—the industry as a whole is puzzled, unprepared, or negligent in carrying out its responsibility to keep the high-voltage electric grids reliable and secure. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has finalized its initial set of smart grid cyber security guidelines. NIST’s Guidelines for Smart Grid Cyber Security (NISTIR 7628) includes high-level security requirements, a framework for assessing risks, an evaluation of privacy issues in personal residences, and other information for organizations to use as they craft strategies to protect the modernizing power grid from attacks, malicious code, cascading errors, and other threats, according to NIST’s press release.

Many power purchase agreements entered into between qualifying facilities (QF) and electric utilities during the 1980s and 1990s have several years remaining on their terms. These contracts typically require the generator to comply with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulations promulgated pursuant to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). The foremost FERC requirement […]

This summary of results from a recent Platts/Capgemini survey of North American utility executives looks at what respondents had to say about all things related to the smart grid. Nearly half of respondents’ utilities have a smart grid strategy in place, while the other half said their utility has one in development.