Markets

After Hurricane Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, as a category 4 storm on October 10, it moved across Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and southeastern Virginia on October 11, and finally out into the Atlantic on October 12. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration office, the storm […]

Despite significant milestones to become a fully regulated utility, FirstEnergy Corp. on October 25 reported third-quarter losses of $512 million on revenue of $3.1 billion. The results largely reflect charges related to the court-approved settlement in the bankruptcy cases of its competitive subsidiaries FirstEnergy Solutions (FES) and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. (FENOC), the company said. […]

NRG Energy, which recently shed a substantial portion of its competitive generation portfolio and has shifted efforts to stimulate growth of its retail business, unveiled a simplified renewables procurement process that does not require a power purchase agreement (PPA).  The company on October 18 launched “Renewable Select,” a plan that it says transforms the “lengthy […]

Utilities are faced with many disruptive changes in the power market. Customers are demanding cleaner energy and turning to distributed generation as a solution. One expert suggested power companies must react and evolve their business models to change with the times. During a keynote presentation at the Distributed Energy Conference in Golden, Colorado, on October […]

The White House may have shelved an effort to force grid operators to buy power from uneconomic coal and nuclear plants amid opposition inside the administration, Politico reported on October 15.  The publication reported “four people with knowledge of the discussions” have confirmed that opposition from the president’s own advisers on the National Security Council […]

The U.S. Senate has cleared a major water infrastructure bill that contains several provisions promoting hydropower development, sending it to the president’s desk. The Senate passed S. 3021, “America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018,” on October 10 through a bipartisan vote of 99–1. Because the House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill in a voice […]

Nearly half of the $2.66 billion spent by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) since 2010 to develop advanced fossil energy technologies was dedicated to nine carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects—but only three were active at the end of 2017, and only one was at a power plant. In a report prepared for […]

Natural gas combined cycle, wind, and residential solar photovoltaic technologies may be the least-expensive way to generate power across a wide swathe of the U.S., an interactive map published and recently updated by the University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s Energy Institute shows.  The interactive chart (Version 1.4.0, retrieved on October 4, 2018), first published […]

Industry aggressively fought the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) when the Obama administration proposed it in 2011 and finalized it in February 2012, warning it would precipitate the closure of a swathe of coal capacity nationwide. Six years later, the rule appears to have had a sizable impact on the power sector, but not […]

GE announced that H. Lawrence Culp Jr. has been named chairman and CEO of the company replacing John Flannery effective immediately. GE’s board of directors voted unanimously on the decision, and it also appointed Thomas W. Horton as lead director. In a press release, GE specifically cited weak performance in the GE Power business for […]

Spurred by the shale gas revolution, natural gas’s stunning rise to dominate the U.S. power profile has been echoed by a number of countries, particularly in the Middle East. In Europe, where domestic natural gas production is actually in decline—and consensus is that shale gas won’t likely play a major role on the continent—natural gas […]

Scorching temperatures during the summer of 2018 forced a swathe of power plants across the world to reduce power or shut down temporarily, owing to warmer-than-usual temperatures of cooling water and other

The California Independent System Operator’s Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) is a real-time energy market, the first of its kind in the western U.S. EIM’s advanced market systems automatically find low-cost

It’s no secret that U.S. nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to remain viable in competitive markets. Many plants have been retired for economic reasons long before the facilities reached the

New York’s subsidies of nuclear power are legally sound, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has concluded. The decision comes two weeks after the Seventh Circuit upheld a similar measure in Illinois. The development marks a victory for the nuclear industry, which has been financially crippled by the rise of cheap gas […]

Duke Energy will swallow $30 million in runaway costs associated with operating its five-year-old 618-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) facility in Edwardsport, Indiana, if a settlement the company reached with Indiana consumer groups last week is approved. Duke declared Edwardsport Generating Station “in service” in June 2013, despite a series of hiccups that delayed […]

The world’s first 3-D printed burner for an industrial gas turbine has been in operation for one year with no reported issues. Siemens, which installed the burner for the 32.8-MW SGT-7000 gas turbine at E.ON’s combined cycle power plant in Philippsthal in the German state of Hessen said on September 19 that it has been […]

The Vogtle nuclear expansion’s “ever-escalating” cost is concerning several members of Georgia’s General Assembly, according to a letter sent to partners building the much-delayed project. Twenty lawmakers from both houses of state government—19 Republicans and one Democrat—sent a letter to the board of directors at Georgia Power Co., Oglethorpe Power Co. (OPC), and Municipal Electric […]

The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey, the oldest operating nuclear plant in the U.S., was shut down on September 17, 2018. For more, see “Oldest U.S. Nuclear Plant Shuts Down.” Visit our video archive

Nuclear power’s share of the world’s power generating mix could shrink dramatically from 10% in 2017 to just 5.6% in 2050 as the industry struggles with “reduced competitiveness,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested in a new report. The international organization based in Vienna, Austria, that works to promote the peaceful use of nuclear […]

Unlike their regulated counterparts, merchant power generators have increasingly struggled to compete over the last few years and the outlook for many is that this won’t change any time soon. While regulated power companies often enjoy near monopolies in their respective markets, merchant power companies build out their power generating capacity on a speculative basis […]

Driven by increased energy efficiency and the relocation of electricity-intensive industries, electricity demand and consumption has steadily declined in many developed markets during the last decade, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Yet middle- and working-class households, as well as small businesses, are spending more of their income on electricity than their parents’ generation. […]

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) interdisciplinary study found that nuclear power has the potential to contribute greatly to the achievement of deep decarbonization goals, yet despite its promise, cost hinders the expansion of nuclear power. “The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World” was released on September 3. It is the eighth in […]

 The Japanese government has pushed for the reuse of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in the country’s nuclear reactors, but utilities that finance the reprocessing have not funded those operations since fiscal year 2016, according to financial reports released by the power companies on September 2. Japan’s KYODO News reported that sources said 10 utilities, including Tokyo […]

The U.S. power system is separated into three major components—the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The three operate almost independently

Electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential to realign the transportation sector and present an opportunity for the power industry to transform and reinvent itself in fundamental ways. But whether this

China completed its first large commercial-scale parabolic-trough concentrated solar power (CSP) plant at the end of June. The 50-MW Delingha project built by CGN New Energy, a subsidiary of China General

Along with producing power from 99 turbines, the 309-MW Hornsdale Wind Farm in South Australia has helped trial new technologies that could ramp up power system security and reliability. At first glance, the

The Solar Energy Industries Association, the national trade association for the U.S. solar industry, reports that solar power has grown in the U.S. at a compounded annual rate of 59% since the solar investment

The inaugural integrated system plan (ISP) released by Australia’s Energy Market Operator (AEMO) in mid-July warns that the country is in the midst of a “transformative and unprecedented” rate of change