Hydro

Owner/operator: Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. Building the 1,870-MW Gibe III hydroelectric project required unprecedented solutions that took into account the remoteness of the site, the narrow gorge where the dam is located, the height of the dam, and challenges in sourcing reliable materials. Split almost diagonally by the East African Rift System, Ethiopia is a […]

Owner/operator: Korea South East Power Co., Ltd. Few people would view a large coal plant as a place to generate renewable energy. But a Korean utility took a chance on an innovative approach, harnessing the latent energy of the plant’s cooling effluent to drive a trio of hydroelectric plants, and in so doing, created a […]

The ocean power sector is still in its early stages of development, shackled by high development and operational costs. Trends emerging over the past two years hint at which technologies could dominate the sector’s future. Despite decades of research and development that have yielded several innovative ways of using oceans to fuel power generation, the […]

Ontario—Canada’s most populous province and its major economic engine—has an electric power supply system so driven by provincial politics that it has pushed the province’s utility generating arm, Ontario Power Generation, into what appear to be incoherent resource policies. Late last September, in a stunning announcement, the Canadian province of Ontario’s Energy Ministry said it […]

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 […]

TransCanada—a leading North American energy company—has struck deals to sell its U.S. Northeast Power business. LS Power will acquire three principally natural gas–fired power plants and a wind farm from TransCanada, while ArcLight Capital Partners will buy 13 hydropower facilities located in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. “The sale of our merchant U.S. Northeast Power […]

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

Four 1.5-MW tidal stream turbines that will make up the first phase of the massive MeyGen project proposed for installation in the Pentland Firth, have been fully assembled. Three of the turbines were built by Andritz Hydro Hammerfest. Tidal power generation firm Atlantis Resources, which owns 85% of the MeyGen project, built the remaining one, […]

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 […]

Brazil’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA, in early August canceled development permits for an 8-GW hydroelectric project on concerns about its social and ecological impacts. If built as proposed by a consortium of multinational companies—including Brazilian parastatal Eletrobras and private sector partners GDF Suez/Engie, EDF, Camargo Correa, Neoenergia, COPEL, and Endesa Brasil—the São Luiz do Tapajós […]