News

Though many have touted the vast promise of ocean energy, it has been slow to reach commercial scale, especially in North America. Today, offshore generating technologies are less of an impediment to commercial project fruition than permitting, financing, and transmission challenges, but small changes are beginning to brighten the outlook for the newest power industry sector.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday narrowly rejected a measure that would have overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), voting 46 to 53 to defeat the resolution introduced by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

In an effort to slash its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) last week said it would terminate a contract to buy power from a units of NV Energy’s Reid Gardner coal-fired power plant in Nevada and instead rely on power from Northern California Power Agency’s (NCPA) 255-MW Lodi combined cycle natural gas-fired plant, which is under construction.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) on Monday completed and put into service its 500-kV Sunrise Powerlink, a $1.9 billion transmission line linking San Diego to the renewables-rich Imperial Valley.

In response to a court order, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed updates on Friday to its national air quality standards for harmful fine particle pollution, including soot (known as PM2.5). The agency says that 99% of U.S. counties are projected to meet proposed standards without any additional actions.

The United States is in a "fierce race" to compete in global solar energy markets, and its success depends on innovation and deploying solar energy at scale, said Steven Chu, secretary of the Department of Energy. He spoke at the SunShot Grand Challenge summit and technology forum in Denver last week. Chu called on the solar industry to drive down costs to enable the technology to compete against natural gas at a price of around $4 per million Btu.

Unexpected steam generator tube wear that prompted the indefinite shutdown of Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in January was caused by excessive tube vibration, company executives confirmed at a community meeting on Monday. Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) meanwhile pinned the tube failures on a flawed computer model used to design the steam generator components.

Do we really have only a decade of gas left? Or a century? Or more than that? The answer requires agreement on some definitions, and a solid grip on the big picture.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday conditionally approved the enhanced resource adequacy proposal submitted by the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator (MISO), which it says will provide even greater market and reliability benefits to MISO’s members and the customers they serve. The enhanced mechanisms become effective October 1, 2012, for the Planning Year that begins on June 1, 2013.

A host of new technologies are ready to transform the energy system, offering the potential to drastically reduce carbon emissions, enhance energy security, and generate a huge investment return, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new energy technology publication launched on Monday.

In a long-running labor dispute, Entergy Corp. on June 7 locked out union workers at its Pilgrim nuclear plant 38 miles southeast of Boston near Plymouth, Mass., bringing in workers from its other plants and contract workers to operate the 685-MW unit along with management officials.

Natural gas-fired generation enjoyed a competitive advantage through this past winter and spring as historically low prices for the commodity combined with mild weather and relatively light demand to turn the dispatch stack on its head and favor gas over coal. That advantage is narrowing as summer demand approaches. A senior market analyst with Bentek Energy expects coal-fired generation to be advantaged at least until the fall shoulder season.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Circuit ruled unanimously on Friday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) erred in deciding that spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from the nation’s power plants could be stored as long as 60 years after a plant’s operating license expires.

Duke Energy and Progress Energy received conditional approval for their merger from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on June 8. The companies plan to close their merger, which would create the nationís largest utility, by the targeted date of July 1.

Mayors of more than 90 U.S. cities have signed a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson voicing their support for the recent EPA Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for Power Plants (MATS).

All indications from Wednesday’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee joint hearing are that Dr. Alison Macfarlane will been confirmed as the new chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and that Commissioner Kristine Svinicki will be approved for a second term. Macfarlane, a nuclear waste expert who served on the White House’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Americaís Nuclear Future, was nominated by President Barack Obama last month after Chairman Gregory Jaczko, whose leadership style was described by commissioners from both political parties as abusive, resigned May 21.

A report released on Friday by consultants at the Brattle Group concludes that tripling peak wholesale power prices in Texas (from $3,000/MWh to $9,000/MWh by 2015), as is being considered by Texas utility commissioners and grid operators to encourage power plant construction in the power-strapped state, would only raise the region’s reserve margin to 10% above peak demand—less than the 13.75% reserve margin recommended by federal regulators.

Nearly three-quarters of the 74 transmission line outages were caused by fallen trees during a snowstorm that hit the Northeast in October 2011 and shut off the lights for more than 3.2 million homes and businesses, concludes a report released jointly by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC).

The growing lack of cooling water resources could decrease power generating capacity in the U.S. by between 4% and 16% and between 6% and 19% in Europe between 2031 and 2060, and the likelihood of extreme drops in generation as a result will almost triple, suggests a new study by European and University of Washington (UW) scientists.

PPL Corp. last week shut down Unit 2 of its Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Luzerne County, Pa., for a planned inspection of its turbine. Unit 1 of the two-reactor plant was shut down after workers in April found cracks similar to damage discovered and repaired in 2011.

Regulated utility South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) last week filed plans with the Public Service Commission of South Carolina to retire up to six coal-fired units—a total capacity of 750 MW—by 2018. The units are some of the utility’s “oldest and smallest,” and it would not be a “good business decision” to add costly environmental control equipment to these plants, SCE&G said.

American Electric Power (AEP) last week temporarily withdrew a $1 billion plan to retrofit its 49-year-old Big Sandy coal-fired plant near Louisa, Ky., from the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC), saying it wanted to reevaluate alternatives to meeting the company’s obligations under the recently finalized federal Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, the Mercury and Air Toxic Standard, and other environmental standards.

A federal court on Friday ruled that collection of a fee by the Department of Energy that totaled nearly $750 million a year from nuclear generators for nuclear waste disposal since 1983 was “legally defective” because development of the Yucca Mountain permanent spent fuel waste facility had been discontinued. But in lieu of suspending the fee, the court ordered the DOE to conduct a reevaluation of the Nuclear Waste Fund within six months.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week issued a Notice of Data Availability (NODA) as a supplement to its April 2011 proposed rule for cooling water intake structures at all existing power facilities as part of section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act.

POWER marks its 130th year of service to the power generation industry with this issue. Instead of cake for the staff, we decided to celebrate the milestone in a way that will benefit our readers and supporters for many years to come.

Yokogawa’s new FX1000 paperless recording system provides premium features and performance for cost-sensitive OEM suppliers and end user process recording applications. Delivering a high level of measurement, recording, and networking functionality in a compact package, the shallow 6.5-inch case depth behind the panel allows for installation in tight locations and easy system integration. A high-precision, […]

South Carolina–based ESAB Welding & Cutting Products introduced the Aristo Tech 5-13 Welding Helmet with Variable Shade ADF. Designed for the professional welder, the helmet features Auto-Darkening Filter Lens Technology (ADF) and has a variable 5-13 digital control for adjustment of shade level, sensitivity, and delay. The helmet’s Quick Set feature allows for easy change […]

The new DustBoss from Dust Control Technology DB-M is designed for applications in which a fan-driven mist could generate undesirable turbulence and is well-suited to operating conditions involving very fine dust particles, including slag dust or fly ash. The unit generates an umbrella-shaped cloud of atomized droplets averaging 50 to 200 microns in size and […]

Cummins Power Generation announced two new internationally styled and designed diesel generator set ranges for global markets. Powered by Cummins engines, both are maintenance-friendly. CE-certification and compliance with international standards make them ideal for a wide variety of applications, including in remote locations. The new low-range 40- to 75-kVA generator sets feature the Cummins S3.8 […]

Just weeks after the U.S. Commerce Department slapped a 31% tariff on 61 Chinese crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell producers and exporters, it imposed preliminary duties of as high as 26% on imports of utility-scale wind towers from China.