Markets

Exelon Corp., the nation’s largest nuclear generator, reinvented itself amid recent power pricing swings, market inequities, and policy worries that are challenging its “very existence,” a high-ranking executive told attendees at the ELECTRIC POWER Conference and Exhibition in Chicago this week. Bryan Hanson, president and chief nuclear officer for Exelon Generation, who gave the annual […]

A decade ago, the annual Platts nuclear energy conference in Washington was brimming with optimism over a coming “nuclear renaissance,” as licensing requests poured into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

PJM Interconnection’s independent market monitor is joining the pushback—spearheaded by a trade group and several generators that operate in competitive wholesale markets—against an Illinois law that props up financially distressed nuclear plants with subsidies. Monitoring Analytics on March 16 filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to intervene […]

Several U.S. states have passed, or are mulling, programs that expand state aid to financially distressed nuclear reactors in a bid to keep them open for economic and environmental reasons. Generators that operate in competitive wholesale markets are perturbed by these measures, which they say amount to nuclear “bailouts.” —Sonal Patel, associate editor (@POWERmagazine, @sonalcpatel) […]

California’s excess of solar power challenges the statewide independent system operator’s ability to balance its system without curtailing low-carbon supplies and ramping up natural gas generation. It’s

Financially hemorrhaging in 2016 due to uneconomic power plants in its fleet, FirstEnergy Corp. said it may exit the competitive generation business by mid-2018, and shutter its nuclear plants in Ohio, even though it will back legislation to subsidize nuclear power. In a fourth quarter earnings call on February 22, officials from the Akron, Ohio–based […]

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 […]

American Electric Power (AEP) has sold four competitive natural gas and coal power plants‚ a total of 5.2 GW, and plans to invest the proceeds from the sale in its regulated business. AEP completed the sale of the plants to Lightstone Generation LLC, a joint venture of Blackstone and an affiliate of ArcLight Capital Partners […]

Non-utility generators urge FERC to overturn state actions in New York and Illinois that the generators claim distort FERC’s wholesale electricity markets.

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 […]