Business

South Korea, China Poised to Make Colossal Investments in Wind Power. South Korea, a nation that recently announced it would spend 1 trillion won ($884 million) on feed-in tariffs for wind and solar projects, on Nov. 10 said it planned to invest 10.2 trillion won ($9 billion) in a 2.5-GW offshore wind farm that could […]

For power providers, grid stabilization has been a rising concern in recent years, especially because of the increasing use of intermittent energy sources such as wind turbines. Maintaining a stable electricity grid is difficult because of the unpredictability of intermittent energy sources. If wind turbines, for example, are supplying 5% of the overall power for the grid and the turbines stop moving because the air grows still, the grid has to find a way to kick into overdrive to compensate for this sudden decrease in energy. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Fluor Enters Small Modular Reactor Market, Backs NuScale. Fluor Corp. on Oct. 13 announced it planned to invest more than $30 million in NuScale Power, an Oregon-based small modular reactor (SMR) technology company. As part of its investment, Fluor has purchased the company’s shares that had previously been in U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission receivership […]

Stable grid operation is challenging, especially when intermittent and unpredictable renewable generation is added to the generation mix. For NorthWestern Energy, the best solution was adding fast-acting gas-fired generation to its Montana electricity grid to meet required reliability standards while replacing expensive third-party contracts for ancillary services.

South Africa is at a critical turning point. An uncertain environment for private investment, escalating electricity prices, and a lack of available power threaten South Africa’s position as an attractive investment destination for many of the country’s most important industries. Power has been placed at the forefront of the government’s agenda, but South Africa needs a collaborative effort to meet the country’s energy demands and diversify its generation portfolio in order to drive economic growth.

A large swath of Southern California, parts of Arizona, and Northern Baja Mexico was blacked out on Sept. 8—leaving seven million people in the dark—after an Arizona utility worker fixing faulty equipment near Yuma reportedly tripped the 500-kV North Gila–Imperial Valley transmission line, causing the outage. The blackout prompted two units at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station to go offline, stranded many people in elevators and trains, shut down airports, cut air conditioning on a day well above 90F, and caused damages of $97 million to $118 million, according to early estimates from the National University System’s Institute for Policy Research.

An intellectual property battle between Massachusetts-based American Superconductor Corp. (AMSC) and China’s giant wind turbine maker Sinovel in late September culminated with an Austrian court conviction of a former AMSC employee, who was arrested in Austria and who pled guilty to corporate espionage charges. The court charged Dejan Karabasevic, a 38-year-old Serbian engineer, with stealing AMSC’s software, modifying it, and secretly selling it to Sinovel.

The number of companies pulling out of the nuclear business continues to grow. Just weeks after Louisiana-based engineering firm The Shaw Group announced it would sell its 20% stake in the nuclear company Westinghouse back to partner Toshiba, German engineering conglomerate Siemens said that, prompted by the German government’s decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022, it would quit the nuclear business.

A German finance court in September questioned the constitutionality of a controversial tax on fuel used in nuclear power plants, a decision that could influence rulings in various finance courts around the country that are reviewing complaints by nuclear operators regarding the levy.

Wärtsilä to Provide Rwanda with Engines for Lake Methane Power. Wärtsilä on Sept. 30 said it was awarded a contract by KivuWatt, a subsidiary of the New York–based international power company ContourGlobal, to supply a power plant to the Republic of Rwanda. The turnkey project is of particular significance because the power plant will utilize […]