Instrumentation & Controls

Although new microgrid configurations, technologies, and business models are still evolving in the U.S., some lessons have been learned in the past few years. Aside from the fact that financing nontraditional/non-campus microgrids is hard, if there’s one overarching lesson, it’s that a microgrid designed to provide only one benefit or rely on only one generation source is unlikely to succeed.

When we undertook an initiative at Granite Ridge Energy (GRE) to identify, prioritize, and assess components that were due for their 10-year assessments, we didn’t know quite what we were taking on or how to

Malware has apparently been used for the first time to prompt a large-scale power blackout. An attack was tied to a Dec. 23 blackout affecting about 1.4 million Ukrainians living in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, reported Ukrainian news media outlet TSN. However, Slovakian information security firm ESET later confirmed that the reported case “was not an […]

Another megatrend has hit the power generation industry: the Internet of Things (IoT)—countless devices with embedded electronics, sensors, and connectivity to digitally communicate with one another and

The U.S. Senate has approved the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), controversial legislation intended to block the deluge of cyberattacks by opening up communication channels between the private sector and federal agencies.   Senate Bill 754 introduced in March by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and co-sponsored by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) passed the Senate by a […]

Before the official start of its Minds + Machines event in San Francisco this week, GE announced the launch of its “Digital Power Plant” during a briefing for the trade press. A formal announcement was to follow in the afternoon. Dick Ayres, general manager of software solutions, power generation services, explained that the company’s Predix […]

Power plants use indicators to monitor process parameters such as pressure, flow, temperature, voltage, current, and vibration. Unless a facility is relatively new, it likely has analog panel meters; some

It’s certainly no secret that for many years, the power industry has been a top target for hackers around the world. However, whereas in the past, many of these attacks were relatively easy to block using

Courtesy: SaskPower There was no debate among our editorial team when it came to selecting the most interesting and worthy project worldwide for this year’s top award. Boundary Dam Power Station Unit 3 is the world’s first operating coal-fired power plant to implement a full-scale post-combustion carbon capture and storage system. It did so more […]

Courtesy: Colorado Energy Nations, GDF SUEZ Energy NA, and Behrent Engineering POWER’s 2015 Reinvention Award (formerly known as the Marmaduke Award) goes to an industrial cogeneration plant that reinvented its largest unit for greater fuel and operating flexibility. This project is exemplary for the owner’s foresight, maximizing local engineering resources, a stellar safety record, and […]

The global power industry is becoming increasingly complex. Trends toward greater amounts of variable renewable energy are changing the requirements for conventional power plants. Energy market policies are

If you’re the person tasked with controlling the level of fly ash in collection hoppers, you know how difficult the application can be. What at first looks like a simple measurement quickly proves to be much more demanding in actual execution. The first problem is the environment inside the collection hoppers, which is extremely challenging […]

Plant engineers at Eskom’s Majuba Power Station in South Africa have been continuously looking for ways to improve efficiency and reliability. The six-unit, 4,000-MW, supercritical coal-fired plant was experiencing an efficiency decrease of 5% to 7%, which plant engineers determined was caused by poor performance of the actuators on their condensate level control valves (CLCVs). […]

Cybersecurity threats facing the power industry have escalated dramatically in the past few years, as state-sponsored, organized crime, and hacktivist groups all seek to infiltrate U.S. energy infrastructure for cyber-espionage and sabotage purposes. A recent example of the severity of this threat can be seen in operation “Energetic Bear”—a Russian campaign to infect U.S. and […]

Nevada utility NV Energy’s net metering program does not significantly impact homeowners without rooftop solar, according to a study prepared for the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (NPUC) this month.  The study was conducted by San Francisco–based Energy and Environmental Economics (E3) at the request of the NPUC after the passage of a Nevada law last […]

With 4.4 million customers and nearly 46 GW of generating capacity, Atlanta-based Southern Co. has doubled the size of its supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system in the past three years and

Nuclear utilities are facing stringent cybersecurity requirements for plant digital assets that fulfill safety-related, important-to-safety, security, and emergency preparedness functions or that are

Power plants were among the leaders in implementing distributed control systems (DCSs), starting in the 1980s with systems based on mini-computers and continuing through the turn of the century. Although many

Mention the word “drone,” and most people will have a mental picture of what a drone is and does. They likely will think first of military drones carrying missiles and other weapons that could malfunction

Source: POWER During IHS CERAWeek in Houston in early March, POWER Editor Gail Reitenbach sat down with Heiner Markhoff, president and CEO of GE Power & Water’s Water & Process Technologies, to ask him about several issues of concern to power plants.  Though the “water/energy nexus” theme has gained prominence recently, Heiner Markhoff’s comments underscored […]

Great River Energy (GRE) is a not-for-profit electric cooperative that generates and transmits power for 28 member cooperatives throughout southern, central, and northern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin

In power plants with drum-type boilers and constant-speed main boiler feed pumps, the feedwater control valve (also referred to as the drum level control valve) provides the means for controlling flow to the

Cybersecurity has become a topic of interest over the past year in generation, owing to new developments in North American Electric Reliability Corp. Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) regulations

It seems as if each week brings further bad news for coal power plants. Recently, Consumer’s Energy sought relief to close three power plants, South Carolina Electric & Gas announced it would cease

In an email interview with POWER, Xue Wei, manager for Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions, China Business Development, provided some insight into the current state of control systems for Chinese power plants. His responses, edited for style, follow. POWER: How widespread are “state-of-the-art” control systems (yours and others) in new generating plants in […]

Training simulators are worth their weight in gold to the power industry, as well as to most process industries in general. People tend to learn the fastest and the most thoroughly when hands-on trial and

Aging human machine interface (HMI) hardware will eventually become a burden on plant operation. Obsolete HMIs can cause problems with connectivity, historical data loss, and hardware failure. As the hardware

Cybersecurity awareness and best practices are increasingly central to the power generation, transmission, and distribution industry. Industrial cybersecurity concerns, recently heightened by awareness of how

Perhaps because the public has been more obsessed in recent years by cybersecurity breaches involving everything from social media accounts to classified military secrets, the amount of attention given to the

A recently published standard has been adopted globally to address risks arising from the use of business information technology (IT) cybersecurity solutions to address industrial automation and control systems (IACS) cybersecurity in complex and dangerous manufacturing and processing applications. The ISA-62443 series of standards, being developed by the ISA99 committee of the International Society of […]