Business

Public power utilities depend upon access to capital at favorable rates. So the munis pay special attention when Wall Street rating agencies talk about tinkering with how they establish bond ratings for municipal utility projects. Thus, recent moves by Moody’s Investors Service has drawn some fire from public power.

Understanding the reliability and failure mechanisms of photovoltaic modules is crucial to understanding how well they will perform over time. But today there are no test standards in place to judge this crucial issue.

Cloud computing is a growing phenomenon for many businesses, large and small, promising significant efficiencies and cost savings. But, as with anything new, computing in the cloud poses some unforeseen legal issues.

Social media are transforming the world around us, and not just the world of our family and friends. Understanding how the new tools of social interaction impact the job is part of the role of today’s effective manager.

Have you seen too many eyes-glazed-over expressions betraying a lack of interest at your employee meetings? Getting folks to pay attention at meetings is important, and there are ways to make it happen.

Over the past 18 months, four solar energy equipment companies have closed their doors. Each one blamed poor market conditions for its economic woes, even though each had fundamental weaknesses that went unaddressed. It now appears that the Department of Energy (DOE) did insufficient due diligence before backstopping one of those four companies, Solyndra, with a $535 million loan guarantee.

A web supplement to the September issue with details of global power shortages.

While the vast power of one form of energy below Earth’s crust (tectonic plate shifts) doomed the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan last March, using another form—heat and steam—is getting renewed attention in the wake of the Japanese meltdown.

What’s on the agenda for the utility industry today and into the future? Platts and Capgemini asked the industry leadership in their latest survey. The answers revolve around regulation, finance, and human resources.

Uncertainty about China’s role in world trade and its current monopoly over critical rare earth minerals continues to roil supply chains in energy technology markets. Will the World Trade Organization bring China into the fold, or will China ignore the international forum that it lobbied hard to join several years ago?

The process of handling employee complaints of workplace discrimination or harassment is filled with potentially disastrous pitfalls. Here are some things to avoid.

Employee training is one of the most important human resource functions, and one of the most difficult to manage. But there are some proven ideas to help guide training programs in the work environment.

"Asset health" offers a conceptual path to integrating information technology with operations technology, thereby overcoming the common management problem of "siloed data," according to a recent study by The McDonnell Group.

Heat waves, droughts, and other weather and climate phenomena; economic woes; aging or inadequate infrastructure; fuel shortages. These are some of the most obvious causes that have led to record peaks in power demand or sudden drops in available capacity. The results have been sometimes debilitating load-shedding, brownouts, and blackouts around the globe this summer (and, in some cases, for much longer). Here’s an overview of which countries are affected by which difficulties. For a more detailed look at the extent of shortages and what’s causing them, visit Web Exclusives at https://www.powermag.com

Australia Pursues Carbon Tax. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard on July 10 laid out an ambitious plan to cut national greenhouse gas emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 by imposing a A$23 (US$23.4) per metric ton carbon tax, starting next year. If parliament approves the plan before year-end, the carbon tax will increase […]

Marcellus Shale gas has increased recoverable natural gas reserves in the U.S. by about a third over estimates prepared a few years ago. Europe is also exploring shale gas as an alternative to problematic Russian gas supplies and low proven natural gas reserves. POWER contributors in the U.S. and UK examine the comparative economic value, public acceptance, and political implications of these massive shale gas reserves.

Recent advances in water laboratory instrumentation—from improved sample conditioning to advanced online instruments—have reached the market. Here’s a look at the equipment you’ll find in the best-equipped power plant laboratory this year.

The Tide Turns for Marine Energy Devices. Siemens Energy recently secured a 10% stake in Marine Current Turbines, the UK company that owns SeaGen, a 1.2-MW tidal power plant, which was commissioned in 2008 on the Irish Sea. Marine Current Turbines is planning to build a larger, 8-MW plant off the coast of Scotland by […]

CTG Universidad is a two-unit combustion turbine plant commissioned in late 1970 by the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) on the north side of Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city and an important industrial center. By the 1990s, the two 14-MW turbines were obsolete, used sparingly, and slated for demolition in 2010. However, by 2002, portions of Monterrey began experiencing power restrictions caused by a lack of sufficient reactive power production, and that situation presented an opportunity for the plant. By repurposing an old combustion turbine for use as a synchronous condenser to provide local reactive power, CFE significantly reduced local power supply limitations. For that savvy plant repurposing, CFE’s CTG Universidad Unit 2 is the winner of POWER’s 2011 Marmaduke Award for excellence in power plant problem-solving. The award is named for Marmaduke Surfaceblow, the fictional marine engineer and plant troubleshooter par excellence.

Cycling your steam power plant is inevitable, so now is the time to learn how to minimize equipment damage and assess the true costs of cycling. Whether cycling is required by the grid operator because of renewable integration or other factors, you must be proactive about updating operating processes and upgrade equipment so the transition to cycling operation goes smoothly.

As coal-fired power plants increasingly operate in cycling modes, many plants are confronting the potential for higher levels of component damage and degraded performance of environmental control equipment. Generators and EPRI are working together to find ways to mitigate the effects of cycling operation and to manage the transition of formerly baseload plants to flexible operation.

A number of automotive manufacturers, electric utilities, electric power associations, and research groups are working to develop and evaluate technical approaches to integrating plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) into the U.S. electrical grid system. This is a key requirement of facilitating widespread, near-term adoption of PEVs by the American public.

FERC has surrendered jurisdiction over station power in California, putting merchant generators nationwide at risk of disadvantage to utility generators.

Enterprise resource planning software has swept the power industry, promising to improve coordination and management. Has it lived up to the hype? One ERP vendor says the programs often underperform.

Indonesia Sees Surge in Contracts for New Power Plants. Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest economy, but because it is stricken by chronic power shortages that limit economic growth, the nation’s government is pushing for massive infrastructure improvements. A consortium of Japan’s Electric Power Development (J-Power), Itochu Corp., and Adaro Energy, an Indonesian coal miner, on […]

A record 400 attendees participated in KEMA’s 22nd annual Executive Forum in San Antonio, Texas, in late April to debate and discuss the “retail resurgence” of competitive electricity sweeping America.

Following the conclusion of the KEMA conference (see previous story), Mark Axford had the opportunity to talk with Phillip Tonge, recently appointed president of Spark Energy LP. Spark Energy is a retail energy provider (REP) of electricity and natural gas in 16 states that have opened their markets to competition for industrial, commercial, or residential customers.

David K. Owens, executive vice president, Business Operations Group for the Edison Electric Institute, comments on the progress U.S. utilities are making toward a smarter electrical power grid.

In a surprising decision, a federal agency surrendered some of its regulatory authority—and parts of the industry don’t approve. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declined to defend its jurisdiction over station power in the California power market, potentially giving an economic advantage to utility generators nationwide and putting merchant generators at a disadvantage.

If you needed additional proof that the power industry is changing, the ELECTRIC POWER keynote and panel discussions over the past few years have provided it—top-of-mind issues have been significantly different each year. For the 2011 keynote speaker and panelists, the challenges of reliability, regulatory compliance, financing, and getting the fuel mix right took center stage. In the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis, safety also featured prominently.