Business

Utilities have achieved success by supplying electricity from central station plants (the supply side) to a grid that carries electricity to customers (the demand side). One way to improve the efficiency of this supply chain is by adopting smart grid technology. The weak link in that chain is convincing customers to use, and regulators to invest in, the smart grid.

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.