Coal

Many coal power stations have recently been operating at historically low capacity factors or have even undergone extended economic shutdowns. This can result in coal stockpiles that are exposed to the elements for much longer times than anticipated, resulting in a loss of usable coal energy by several mechanisms. This article explores the severity of […]

Nine people, including the chairman and chief engineer of the Fengcheng power plant, have been arrested following a scaffold collapse that killed 74 construction workers on November 24. The scaffold platform had been erected to facilitate work on a cooling tower that was being constructed at the plant located in Yichun City, Jiangxi Province. According […]

Coal, the unchallenged leader in U.S. power generation for most of the past century, may regain its place at the top of the energy mix hierarchy this winter, according to projections released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA’s November Short-Term Energy Outlook suggests that prices for natural gas delivered to the power […]

Plans to repower NRG Energy’s coal-fired 435-MW Dunkirk power plant near Buffalo, N.Y., to natural gas that have been stalled for years owing to a legal challenge may finally be revived. NRG Energy mothballed the four-unit plant in January 2016. The company had filed to mothball the facility nearly four years earlier, in March 2012, […]

The latest attempt by Exelon Corp. to save two of its struggling Illinois nuclear power plants passed a critical hurdle late last week: the Future Energy Jobs Bill—known as SB 2814—was introduced in the Illinois state General Assembly, after passing the House Energy Committee by a 9–1 vote. Exelon claims the bill would save and […]

Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change on November 21 announced regulatory actions to accelerate the phase-out of coal generation that lacks carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) across the country within the next few decades. The measures announced by Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna are part of a larger transition from “traditional” […]

FirstEnergy Corp.—one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric utilities, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York—has made the strategic decision to exit the competitive power business. “We have made our decision that over the next 12 to 18 months we’re going to exit competitive generation and become a fully […]

Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the U.S. presidential election portends enormous changes in U.S. energy and environmental policy, and a nearly complete turnover of the men and women who will administer that policy for the next four years.

The November 8 election yielded surprising results for controversial energy-related measures in three states. In Florida, voters rejected Amendment 1, a measure backed by utilities to curb the expansion of resident-owned solar rooftop installations. In Washington, the nation’s first state attempt to impose a carbon tax on fossil fuels and power generated from fossil fuels fell […]

Southern Co. has once again moved back the in-service date for the Kemper County integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant under construction in Mississippi, this time to December 31, the company said in its quarterly report released on November 4. Though the plant has experienced ongoing construction delays for a variety of reasons, the most […]

Vattenfall to Convert Berlin Coal Plants to Natural Gas. Sweden’s state-owned power company Vattenfall is phasing out the use of coal in Germany’s capital Berlin. The company on September 28 said it would

Circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology is taking a growing share of the international coal-fired power generation market, particularly in the Pacific Rim and China. Indigenous designs are also growing in

China, which continues to build more new coal plants than any other nation, is also on the forefront of deploying the most advanced coal plant technologies. However, these advanced units could face

In yet another sign of China’s overcapacity problem, especially in its coal sector, the central government has reportedly ordered a halt to construction on at least 30 coal-fired plants totaling 17 GW of capacity. A continuing slowdown in China’s economy has thrown its power-sector planning into chaos, as estimates of future demand growth made in […]

Idaho Power—co-owner with NV Energy of the two-unit 522-MW North Valmy Generating Station near Battle Mountain, Nevada—filed a request with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (IPUC) last week seeking to accelerate the depreciable life of the power plant from 2031 for Unit 1 and 2035 for Unit 2 to 2025 for both units. In Idaho […]

FuelCell Energy and ExxonMobil will test a novel fuel cell carbon capture technology at a Southern Co. 2.7-GW coal- and gas-fired power plant in Alabama, the companies said on October 27. The technology under development by the companies uses carbonate fuel cells to concentrate and capture carbon dioxide streams from power plants. A pilot plant […]

American Electric Power’s (AEP’s) Tanner’s Creek Plant in Lawrenceburg, Ind., concluded six decades of operation last May as the company moved to retire a group of its oldest plants. Closure of the four-unit, 995-MW coal-fired facility (Figure), once the most efficient steam plant in the world, was a blow to the southwestern Indiana communities around […]

German utility RWE warned energy markets this week that low water levels on the Rhine River may affect the delivery of hard coal to some of its plants.

Although Duke Energy maintains that “only very minor erosion of material” migrated from an inactive coal ash basin on the H.F. Lee Power Plant site, several environmental advocacy groups are concerned that the spill has dirtied North Carolina’s Neuse River. “This spill is easily visible to anyone in a boat. The area looks like a […]

In a major development for a novel carbon capture technology, developers are preparing to commission a 1-MWt oxy-fired pressurized fluidized bed combustion (oxy-PFBC) pilot test facility in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its Canadian counterpart, Natural Resources Canada, commemorated the facility’s construction and commissioning in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on October 18 […]

A federal court has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to file a plan and schedule to evaluate the consequences of its air pollution rules on jobs, finding for a giant coal company that is suing the agency for an alleged “war on coal” waged over the past five years. In an October 17 summary […]

An explosion reported on October 13 at Luminant’s coal-fired Oak Grove Power Plant located near Franklin, Texas, was from a blown transformer, the company said. Robertson County dispatchers received a call from the power plant at 6:08 p.m., reporting that there had been an explosion at the plant “as a result of an electrical issue.” […]

The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will award up to $80 million to a 10-MWe pilot project that seeks to advance the development and commercialization of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton power cycles. The plant will be managed by three research entities: the Gas Technology Institute (GTI), Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), and […]

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) voted unanimously to support Xcel Energy’s latest long-range plan, which will transform the company’s energy fleet. Xcel expects to more than double its renewable energy portfolio as a result, delivering greater than 60% carbon-free energy to its Upper Midwest (Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) customers by […]

Six northeastern states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force it to act on controlling air pollution blowing in from coal-fired power plants located in nine Midwestern and southern states. New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont on October 7 filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the […]

Mississippi Power’s integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant in Kemper County, Miss., on October 12 has begun generating its first power using a combination of syngas (produced from locally mined lignite) and natural gas. The milestone is a major one, said Thomas Fanning, CEO of Mississippi Power’s parent company Southern Co. “After decades of research […]

Academics at the University of Sheffield—a public research university in the UK—have begun two new carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, searching for cheaper methods of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil-fueled power plants. The work is being funded by the European Commission’s (EC’s) Horizon 2020 Low Carbon Energy program. Solvents Could Be Game-Changing The […]

Mississippi Power’s integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant under construction in Kemper County, Miss., will likely be placed in service by November 30, a month later than anticipated. The delay will be costly. Mississippi Power reached a new milestone on September 16, announcing that it had started producing syngas using the second gasifier—gasifier “A”—at […]

As of October 5, the Paris Agreement—the first global agreement on efforts to limit and mitigate the effects of climate change—had been ratified by a sufficient number of countries, representing at least 55% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, to bring the agreement into force.

Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) will close the 620-MW Hudson Generation Station in Jersey City, N.J., and the 632-MW Mercer Generation Station in Hamilton Township, N.J., on June 1, 2017. “The sustained low prices of natural gas have put economic pressure on these plants for some time. In that context, we could not justify the […]