Legal & Regulatory

In recent years, coal power generators have faced increasing difficulty predicting annual fuel requirements due to more cycling and low-load operation. That presents problems for the people negotiating fuel contracts. Not all mining companies are amenable to contract changes, but some unique solutions have been developed. Remember when coal-fired power plants supplied baseload power 24/7/365 […]

As concerns about grid security increase globally, it’s a good time to review the history, scope, and effect of North American electric system reliability standards. As the threat landscape changes, standards alone are not enough. Mandatory. That’s the key word in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) where grid security is concerned. Within two […]

Complying with reliability standards requires considerable resource planning. The tools and suggestions provided here may help engineers conform to new generator relay loadability requirements. But compliance

Yesterday’s retail tariff is prohibiting the optimal dispatch of cogeneration resources as our grid is transforming with high levels of solar generation and potential overgeneration issues. An Unintended Consequence of Policy California has some of the most ambitious energy efficiency and renewable energy goals in the world. Investments in renewable energy and other clean energy […]

Heads of some of the nation’s energy trade groups are looking forward to a rollback of regulations under the Trump administration, they said January 31 during a panel discussion at the United States Energy Association’s annual State of the Energy Industry Forum. President and CEO of the National Mining Association, Hal Quinn, perhaps the most […]

Though Southern California weathered last summer without major natural gas supply constraints that were feared as a result of the 2015–2016 leak from the Aliso Canyon storage field, a blast of cold weather this week has forced Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) to withdraw stored gas from the still-damaged facility to maintain reliability. The limited […]

Having been denied a request for an extended schedule, petitioners in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the merits of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for coal-fired power plants late on January 23 filed a series of briefs with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The briefs filed […]

While admitting no wrongdoing or liability, Duke Energy reached an agreement with the U.S. government to resolve a lawsuit related to its acquisition of a Florida gas-fired power plant. The plant in question—Osprey Energy Center (Figure 1)—is a 537-MW two-unit combined cycle facility located in Auburndale, Fla., that Duke Energy purchased from Calpine Construction Finance […]

Amazon’s latest wind farm in coastal North Carolina has completed construction and is weeks from beginning operations—and state legislators have just asked the incoming Trump administration to shut it down. The $400 million, 208-MW, 104-turbine project, built by Apex Renewables near Elizabeth City and backed by financing from Iberdrola Renewables, is supposed to power Amazon’s […]

Homer City Generation, operator of a three-unit, 1,884-MW coal-fired generating station about 45 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Pa., has initiated a voluntary, pre-packaged Chapter 11 case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The financial restructuring process is expected to eliminate more than $600 million in existing secured debt from Homer City’s […]

Although AREVA recently disclosed that 17 U.S. nuclear power plant units have installed components that were forged at the Le Creusot facility in France—a forge that has been under scrutiny due to questionable quality assurance documentation and carbon segregation irregularities in some parts manufactured at the site—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not consider the […]

Entergy Corp. and the state of New York have reached an agreement that will see the Indian Point nuclear power plant retired by 2021. “Key considerations in our decision to shut down Indian Point ahead of schedule include sustained low current and projected wholesale energy prices that have reduced revenues, as well as increased operating […]

If the Clean Power Plan is scrapped or weakened, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be forced to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by existing power plant with wider repercussions under its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program, experts have warned. While President-Elect Donald Trump promised to “scrap” the Clean Power Plan during his […]

As our January 2017 cover image of a dynamic Rubik’s Cube suggests, the power industry, especially in the U.S., is dealing with something akin to solving a 3-D puzzle whose pieces are being added and subtracted as the game is being played. Although shares of traditional, regulated electric utilities remain some of the most predictable […]

The U.S. market for electricity is trifurcated. More than half the country is served by competitive generators bidding against each other in wholesale markets. Almost half is served by conventional state-regulated, vertically integrated utilities controlling generation and transmission. The rest, a much smaller portion, consists of government-owned and customer-owned utilities, some of which are generators […]

The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) launched its 51st State Initiative in 2014 with a simple question: What if there were no predefined electricity market? No rules. No market designs. No policies. No subsidies for any type of energy resource. Just a grid to deliver electric power from a variety of sources. And customers. Plenty […]

Just as the election of Donald J. Trump could result in redirected energy policy in the U.S., 2017 elections in France and Germany could reshape plans for electricity infrastructure on the European continent. Also on both continents, some factors and trends will be out of elected officials’ control. “Difficult to see. Always in motion is […]

A digital roundtable with four senior members of diverse generating companies reveals that regulations aren’t the top concern at the moment. Instead, decisions are being driven both by customer desires and

Barely a year after Mexico launched a wholesale market with retail competition as part of a wide-scale reform of its power sector, the country has managed to implement a transparent system that is attracting investment. Mexico has also expanded its grid and deployed notable amounts of renewables that are producing power at unprecedented low prices, […]

Just a few months ago, New England’s biggest and most controversial pipeline proposal, Algonquin Gas Transmission’s Access Northeast project (see “Securing Pipeline Infrastructure for Gas-Fired Generation in New England” in the July 2016 issue), was poised for regulatory scrutiny. Access Northeast distinguished itself by its partnership with electric distribution companies (EDCs), namely National Grid and […]

A tumultuous election year that was marked by market turmoil, the events of 2016 clearly showed that big change is afoot for the power sector. Many of POWER‘s bold predictions for 2016, such as that the near-simultaneous surge in U.S. natural gas production and recent enactment of environmental rules would reshape the U.S. power sector, […]

Toshiba Corp.—the parent of Westinghouse Electric Co.—said it might book huge losses as a result of Westinghouse’s acquisition of the nuclear construction and integrated services business CB&I Stone & Webster Inc. (S&W). Westinghouse closed on its agreement with CB&I in December 2015. When the deal was made, Toshiba estimated that the amount of “goodwill” resulting […]

In a joint statement on December 20, the leaders of the United States and Canada announced that they had developed a new partnership that effectively bans additional licenses for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abandoned an interagency review of draft model carbon trading rules that were issued alongside the final Clean Power Plan to make associated documents public before the Trump administration takes the reins at the agency. The agency proposed the model trading rules as components of state implementation plans that it […]

Fermi 2, a 1,170-MW boiling water reactor owned by DTE Electric on the western shore of Lake Erie, in Monroe County, Mich., has garnered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) green light to operate until March 2045. DTE Electric submitted an application to the NRC to renew the 29-year-old reactor’s operating license in April 2014. The […]

Although optimistic about the future of the coal industry under the Trump administration, Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., the largest underground coal mining company in the U.S., does not expect the president-elect to bring back coal mining jobs or spur new coal-fired power plant construction. “I’ve asked President-elect Trump to temper his comments […]

The tumultuous Trump transition took another turn late Tuesday, as reports from many media outlets said he has picked Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a freshman who won a second House term in November’s election, to be Secretary of Interior. Many of the same media sources late last week said Trump would pick Washington Rep. Cathy […]

As one of its last official acts, the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) backed away from making a definitive statement on the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, saying it lacked sufficient data to quantify their severity and frequency. The 1,200-page final report issued December 13, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic […]

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) as his nominee to be Secretary of the Interior. There had been no official announcement as this was being written December 9, but CNBC said it had been informed of the choice by a “senior Trump official.” The Wall Street Journal and the […]