International

French multinational power company ENGIE on October 20 inaugurated a mini-network comprising 16 kW of solar photovoltaic panels, a 45-kWh lithium-ion battery bank, and a back-up genset to supply power to Ketumbeine, a village in northern Tanzania with about 800 residents. The PowerCorner project (Figure 6) was launched in early 2015. ENGIE said the project […]

China’s third nuclear reactor built for the export market, Chashma Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3, was connected to Pakistan’s grid in mid-October. Chashma 3 is one of two Chinese-designed CNP-300 pressurized-water reactors being built on the site in Punjab Province. Unit 3 is expected to enter commercial operation at the end of 2016 and Unit […]

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: Akca Enerji Geothermal energy has long been handicapped by its need for high-temperature resources to generate economic power, but innovations in binary Organic Rankine Cycle systems are making it possible to exploit low-temperature sites. An innovative plant in Turkey using Italian technology has taken things a step further with a unique two-pressure, multistage, single-disk […]

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 […]

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 […]

China’s Sichuan provincial government has moved to restrict construction of small and medium hydropower projects between 2016 and 2020 in an effort to improve grid planning and efficiency. Policy proposals posted on the Sichuan government’s website in October seek to prohibit small-scale hydropower projects and limit medium-sized plants over the next five years. Reuters reported […]

In a rare intervention, the United Nations’ (UN’s) heritage conservation arm is urging Bangladesh to relocate a proposed 1,320-MW coal-fired power plant because it poses a serious threat to one of the world’s largest mangrove forests. Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Co. Ltd. (BIFPCL)—a joint venture of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and India’s largest power […]

A 52.5-MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant commissioned this October in Jordan will generate about 1% of the Middle Eastern nation’s power (Figure 5). 5. Solar carpet. The 52.5-MW Shams Ma’an Solar Power Plant in Jordan was commissioned this October. Courtesy: Business Wire The plant uses more than 600,000 Series 4 thin-film modules manufactured by Arizona-headquartered […]

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 […]

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” […]

Meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, during the most recent United Nations climate change conference (COP22), Mission Innovation countries—a group of nations whose stated mission is to accelerate the pace of clean energy innovation—launched seven innovation challenges, designed as a global call to action for the research community, industry, and investors. The challenges are: Smart Grids Off-Grid […]

Russia and China have agreed to expand cooperation on nuclear energy, with Russia to build another two reactors in China in addition to expanding cooperation on fast-reactor technology and floating nuclear plants, Russia’s state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom said in a November 8 statement. The two nations, which share a 4,200-kilometer-long border, have worked together on […]

Although many observers consider Elon Musk—the visionary entrepreneur who leads Tesla Motors and SpaceX—to be a disruptive force threatening the conventional power industry, he believes power companies have a bright future, if his goal to expand the use of electric cars and install vast numbers of rooftop solar systems is achieved. Speaking during a presentation […]

This September, Puerto Rico suffered an island-wide blackout that left 1.5 million utility customers without power for more than 50 hours and reportedly resulted in multimillion-dollar losses for its already troubled economy. The blackout in the U.S. territory with a population of about 3.5 million occurred on September 21, when a blaze erupted in a […]

The International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS) is an international nonprofit association of national organizations concerned with the properties of water and steam, particularly

Owner/operator: Rosenergoatom Fast-neutron reactors are pivotal to Russia’s ambitious nuclear power plans. The successful construction, grid-connection, and testing of the country’s first BN-800 reactor at its Beloyarsk nuclear plant is a major achievement in the right direction. Since the Soviet Union began its first experimental nuclear power projects in the 1940s, Russia has embraced nuclear’s […]

China is on an epic build-out of its nuclear generating capacity, and developing indigenous expertise and technology is central to that goal. The first completed plant leveraging the nation’s CPR-1000 design

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

As installed capacity in the U.S. continues its breakneck growth, the solar photovoltaic sector is poised for another leap forward with a variety of new technologies—if increasingly ill-suited regulations and rate designs can be updated to keep pace. The global solar market has moved beyond its early, uncertain days. The luxury of behaving like start-ups […]

The world’s first wind farms are reaching the end of their expected lifetimes. As they become outdated, or just inefficient, many developers are considering repowering. Here’s a look at where repowering activity is happening the most and why. Since the world’s first wind turbine used to convert wind energy into electricity was built by Professor […]

Europe’s first megawatt-size fuel cell went online in September. The 1.4-MW power plant put online by E.ON and FuelCell Energy Solutions in Mannheim, Germany, will provide power over the next 10 years, at least, for production processes of materials specialist FRIATEC. The plant was installed in only nine months as a joint project by E.ON […]

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, […]

In July 2016, the German parliament approved three major pieces of legislation specifically laying out the future of the celebrated Energiewende: the 2017 revision of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, the Electricity Market Act, and the Act on the Digitization of the Energy Transition. “These three pieces of legislation will ensure that the transition of […]

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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.