International

General Electric (GE) said December 7 it will cut 12,000 jobs in its power unit as the company continues to struggle with changes in the global power market. The company in a statement said the staff reductions will save $1 billion in 2018. “Traditional power markets including gas and coal have softened,” the company said, […]

In December 2016, Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) announced the introduction of its JAC gas turbine—a new air-cooled J-series model. The JAC has flexible ramping capabilities, an impressive 64% efficiency, 99.5% reliability, and a combined cycle output of 575 MW. Furthermore, the design has been thoroughly tested, with more than 14,000 operating hours at T-Point, MHPS’s validation facility. The […]

Fuel, operations, and plant design all affect the overall efficiency of a plant. This quiz is designed to test your knowledge of heat rate and efficiency fundamentals. Create your own user feedback survey To learn more about coal plant efficiency, frequent problems that reduce efficiency, and some solutions for improving operation and reducing generation costs, read “Understanding Coal […]

In a November report, The Global CCS Institute said carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the only technology able to decarbonize the industrial sector. To reach the Paris Agreement’s target to keep global atmospheric temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius, 2,500 CCS facilities will need to be operational by 2040, with 14% of cumulative […]

Southeast Asia offers rich renewable sector opportunities, recently exemplified by Chevron’s multibillion-dollar sale of its Indonesian and Philippines geothermal projects, and the purchase of Equis Energy

On September 26, 2017, UK Climate Change Minister Claire Perry marched across a slightly muddy field to a 10-MW solar farm built by British renewable energy developer Anesco. The high-profile visit included a

The Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, part of a hydro-solar integration in the high desert on the Tibetan Plateau, has helped the country move toward its ambitious targets for increasing generation from cleaner fuel

The 330-MW Sarulla Geothermal Power Plant in Indonesia took decades to develop. Backed by a multinational financing effort along with support from the Indonesian government, the $1.6 billion project may be on

Cross-border trade in energy—electricity, natural gas, and oil—has been an unanticipated boon to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, exceeding $140 billion in 2015. The Trump administration’s antipathy toward

Power plants are inherently dangerous. Although safety is taken very seriously at most facilities, every year workers around the world are killed on the job by electrocution, falls, explosions, fires, and

The world’s first floating offshore wind farm, located roughly 25 kilometers off the coast of Peterhead, Scotland, powered up on October 18, delivering electricity to the Scottish grid. Hywind Scotland was

The Swiss company Climeworks in October said it had begun another round of testing for a direct air capture (DAC) facility at a 300-MW geothermal power plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland. Climeworks, which is

Cheap natural gas, the impact of subsidized intermittent renewables on power prices, and nuclear policies in several countries in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident will continue to hamper strong growth

After months of controversy, Australia’s federal government in October dumped its consideration of a clean energy target (CET) that sought to slash the country’s electricity emissions of carbon dioxide by

The state-owned North-West Power Generation Co. Ltd. (NWPGCL) in Bangladesh in early November announced plans to build a 3,600-MW regasification liquefied natural gas (LNG) combined cycle power plant in the

Construction Set to Begin on First Nuclear Plant in Turkey. Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, in mid-October said construction of the country’s first nuclear power plant would

When is a D+ grade acceptable? The answer should be never. But that’s the state of the U.S. power grid according to the 2017 infrastructure report card issued by the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE). And the impact of this year’s catastrophic hurricane season only reinforced its vulnerability. Given the billions of dollars of […]

In the next 25 years, the world will turn increasingly to renewables and natural gas to meet energy demand, turning away from coal, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2017 (WEO). As in previous years, the report makes predictions based on different scenarios. This year’s include a New Policies Scenario, which […]

Officials in India say the the death toll from the November 1 explosion at an NTPC thermal plant in Unchahar has risen to 43, with seven more deaths reported in the past week. Dozens of workers at the plant were injured when flue gases and steam were released from a 500-MW coal-fired unit at the […]

India’s Power Ministry has established a committee to investigate the November 1 explosion at NTPC’s thermal power plant in Unchahar. The death toll from the blast is at 36, and dozens more workers at the plant were injured when flue gases and steam were released from a 500-MW coal-fired unit at the plant. Several remain […]

Officials in India on November 6 said the death toll has risen to 35 after an explosion and fire November 1 at NTPC’s Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station in Uttar Pradesh state. NTPC, the nation’s largest power utility, said flue gases and steam were released in the blast, which occurred in a 500-MW coal-fired unit […]

An explosion at a coal-fired power plant in India has killed as many as 29 people and injured more than 100, according to officials in Lucknow, India. The blast, which occurred November 1 at the Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station, was apparently caused when a boiler pipe burst in a 500-MW generating unit that […]

Challenges abound for nuclear power plants in today’s world, with increased competition from other fuels, stricter safety regulations, divided public opinion, and low electricity prices providing an

Organizations across every industry today face a wide range of cyber threats and serious security challenges from various vectors. A top concern among these is the persistence cybersecurity experts are seeing

Process engineers at a power plant in Western Europe were upgrading the facility with new combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) technology. CCGT power plants operate with both gas turbines and steam turbines

Ugandan officials said they want to double the country’s installed power generation capacity over the next two years, primarily with the construction of hydropower projects. However, those same officials

Africa’s first major coal-fired power unit to implement flue gas desulfurization (FGD) has been completed nearly a year earlier than expected.  South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom brought Kusile 1

China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC) has completed the installation of its high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) project, the joint venture told the International Atomic Energy Agency

Giant UK Tidal Lagoon Project Secures Grid Connection Deal. Tidal Lagoon Power’s project to build a full-scale 3.2-GW tidal lagoon power plant in the Severn Estuary in Swansea Bay to harness strong tides on

The UK dropped the ball on carbon capture and storage (CCS) development and Scotland intends to pick it up, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced in early September. In the government’s program