Gas

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in August revealed that it had developed a 2-MW 16-cylinder high-speed gas engine that potentially offers a power generation efficiency (lower heating value) of more than

Regulators from six states shared starkly different views on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed carbon rules for existing power plants at a House hearing on Tuesday. Some state-level officials said the EPA’s overall emission targets and suggested means to achieve them are based on unworkable and unrealistic assumptions about how state and regional power […]

The U.S. added 1,146 MW of utility-scale solar generation in the first half of 2014—the most ever for a first- and second-quarter period—but natural gas continued to lead new additions, though its margin may be shrinking, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. Through the first six months of 2014, the U.S. added 2,179 MW […]

They call themselves “Fractivists.” Environmental and community activists fearful of relatively new natural gas and oil drilling technologies that have transformed the U.S. energy economy have launched a high-profile, highly hyped campaign to shut down new natural gas production. But their prospects of success look dodgy. Ground Zero in the debate over fracking—shorthand for the […]

Nearly four years to the day after eight people were killed in a natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, two judges of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ruled on Sept. 2 that Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) must pay a record $1.4 billion in fines and penalties for its role in the disaster. […]

The Aug. 4–6 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit shed light on the power plights faced by sub-Saharan African countries, but it also highlighted their massive power potential and the array of solutions under consideration to resolve Africa’s energy crisis. Here are a number of key insights gleaned from discussions at the summit—the first a U.S. president has […]

With a huge gold mine set to increase the load on an already overstressed grid, the mine owners and a Dominican generation company found a way to power mine operations and address capacity shortfalls by joining forces on the same project.  Like many countries in the developing world, the Dominican Republic regularly struggles to meet […]

Combined cycle plants have the advantages of being extremely efficient and can be built in two phases when power needs peak unexpectedly. Ulsan 4 was built in response to the country’s 2011 power crisis for both reasons. The first task was installation of the combustion turbines in time to meet the 2013 summer peak demand. […]

Once merely a staple of backup and distributed generation, reciprocating engines are now challenging other resources for utility-scale generation—in addition to carving out some new niches. Grant County is a rural, sparsely populated county in southwestern Kansas. It doesn’t have a lot of people—its population in the 2010 U.S. Census was just 7,829—but what it […]