News

Électricité de France (EDF), Constellation Energy’s partner in five nuclear plants on three sites in Maryland and New York and a 7.2% owner of Constellation shares, on Tuesday withdrew its opposition to a $7.9 billion merger between Baltimore-based Constellation and Chicago-based Exelon Corp. The French company said it had reached an agreement with Exelon to protect the “operational autonomy” of the Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG).

Two reports assessing wave and tidal resources in the U.S. released today by the Department of Energy (DOE) suggest that water power—including conventional hydropower and wave, tidal, and other resources—could provide 15% of the nation’s electricity by 2030.

Myanmar’s government on Monday cancelled construction of a 4,000-MW coal-fired power plant proposed by Thai company Italian-Thai Development on public concerns about the plant’s environmental impact.

The newest initiative to protect the nation’s power grid from cyber attacks is the “Electric Sector Cybersecurity Risk Management Maturity” project, led by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The project is expected to leverage the insight of private and public sector grid experts and build on existing cybersecurity measures and strategies.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), an organization representing state public service commissioners, joined forces to launch a forum to explore reliability issues that could crop up as a result of new and pending environmental rules for the power sector.

A new report published by the Institute for Electric Efficiency (IEE) finds that electric energy efficiency savings are on the rise in the U.S.—and that electric utilities accounted for a vast majority of ratepayer-funded electric efficiency expenditures in 2010.

Two of Vermont’s largest power distribution companies on Monday filed suit against Entergy Vermont Yankee, owner of the aging 620-MW Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant in Vernon, Vt., alleging that Entergy’s faulty maintenance of cooling towers at the plant in 2007 and 2008 had cost them $6.6 million in increased power costs and lost capacity payments.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) on Friday asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a rehearing of a decision it made last December, when it ruled the Pacific Northwest–based federal agency discriminated against wind generators after the BPA curtailed wind power when high river flows hit the region last May and June.

New policy on nuclear safety regulation could limit the operational life of Japanese nuclear plants to 40 years and require operators to prepare for severe accidents, Japan’s government announced on Friday. If the new law is passed, at least 13 plants, as well as the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors, will be shut down per the […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit temporarily blocked the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) just two days before it was set to go into effect. The federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to continue administering the previously promulgated Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) until a final decision can be made on the merits of the rule, likely this summer or fall.

An AES Corp. subsidiary that owns more than 1,000 MW of coal-fired capacity at six facilities in New York last week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing falling power prices and heightened costs from compliance with environmental regulations.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) last week upheld a decision by the state’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU) that a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between Cape Wind and utility National Grid would be a cost-effective use of ratepayer money. The decision means Cape Wind is closer to building North America’s first offshore wind farm.

Pennsylvania’s Sunbury Generation, a company that owns the Shamokin Dam plant—the nation’s oldest coal-fired power plant—last week reportedly said it would close five of its six coal-fired generation units and replace them with two natural gas–fired turbines by 2015. The company cited stricter regulations on power plant emissions.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) on Thursday approved a 275-MW solar plant in California and a 104-MW wind farm in Oregon that will be built on private lands and use power lines that cross public lands to connect to their respective grids. The projects are the 26th and 27th renewable projects approved by the DOI in the past two years.

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) plans to begin construction of six new 500-kV overhead transmission lines at the Grand Coulee Dam—the nation’s largest hydropower facility—next month, the public service organization said last week. The new lines will help ensure continued safe and reliable transmission of power between Grand Coulee Dam’s third power plant and the BPA’s vast high-voltage power grid.

PJM Interconnection on Sunday began operational control of the transmission systems of Duke Energy Ohio and Duke Energy Kentucky, both subsidiaries of Duke Energy, and began administering open, competitive wholesale electricity markets in those areas, the regional grid operator said on Jan 1.

The November issue of POWER featured a special section titled “Condenser Life Cycle.” That set of four articles covered topics including condenser performance, operation and maintenance (O&M), failure mechanisms, and retubing—topics you will surely find useful at some time in your career. The authors of those four articles work for companies that are part of […]

The New Year will be pivotal for the power generation industry, as you will read in our 2012 Industry Forecast (p. 26) and my list of predictions below. Looking back over the past year, I again gave myself a B+ on my 2011 predictions (see p. 33 for a rundown of my individual scores).

In “Siemens Releases ‘ShapingPower’ Option for Renewables Integration” (December 2011), the Figure 3 callouts for wind and solar were reversed. POWER regrets the error. A corrected version can be found in the online version of the article. â– 

Xenon has introduced the T925 Wireless Cellular Controller for connecting remote sites with central control and monitoring stations through cellular networks. A T925 remote communications network eliminates the need to make hardwired Ethernet connections to the Internet or an intranet at each remote site and the central control and monitoring station. The network operates from […]

A new nonmetallic Mobile Pump/Tank Cart from Vanton Pump and Equipment Corp. transfers wastewater and caustic/acidic chemicals with no corrosion and ultrapure fluids with no contamination. All fluid contact surfaces of the tank, base plate, and secondary containment chamber are of solid polypropylene, polyethylene, PVC, or other inert thermoplastic, precluding corrosion across the entire pH […]

HDE’s newly launched DVM-80UVK Universal Voltmeter Kit expands features of the DVM-80 series voltmeter and includes several accessories that enable voltmeter and phasing operations for virtually all overhead and underground applications. HDE is offering the kit as a complete, ready-to-use universal voltmeter package. It includes a dual-stick phasing voltmeter with overhead hook probes for use […]

ASGCO, a manufacturer of proprietary bulk conveyor components and accessories, announced a new addition to its line of Tru-Trainer conveyor belt tracking idlers: a V-Return style of the company’s Dual Return Tru-Trainer Conveyor Belt Tracker. Tru-Trainer idlers react as the conveyor belt moves off center, maintaining the belt’s original position, minimizing belt wear and conveyor […]

SunPower has introduced the SunPower C7 Tracker, a solar photovoltaic (PV) tracking system that concentrates the sun’s power seven times to achieve what the company claims could be “the lowest levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility-scale solar power plants available today.” The C7 Tracker combines single-axis tracking technology with rows of parabolic mirrors, reflecting […]

Columbia Research Laboratories has introduced the Model VM-300 vibration meter, a general purpose vibration-measuring instrument designed for periodic routine checks of industrial equipment where portability and ease of use are required. Acceleration, velocity, and displacement measurement modes are provided, along with a number of value-enhancing features. Dual power allows the VM-300 to be powered from […]

Reaching a major milestone, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday granted a final Design Certification Amendment to Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor design, paving the way for utilities in the U.S. to build nuclear plants using the third-generation reactor design.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) issuance of its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)—a rule that will mandate all coal- and oil-fired power generating units limit emissions of heavy metals and acid gases using “maximum achievable control technology” (MACT)—last week provoked a range of reactions, including renewed concerns about its costs and impact on grid reliability.

In a key settlement that will resolve all environmentally based legal challenges against its 600-MW ultrasupercritical John W. Turk Jr. power plant under construction near Texarkana, Ark., Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO) on Thursday agreed to several conditions, including phasing out a 528-MW coal-fired unit in Texas, building 400 MW of renewable power, and limiting new transmission lines in natural areas.

Exelon Corp. and Constellation Energy Group must sell three electricity generating plants in Maryland before the companies can proceed with their proposed $7.9 billion merger to level competition for wholesale electricity in the mid-Atlantic region, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said last week.

A report released on Thursday by the Department of Energy (DOE) examining the role that rare earth metals play in the manufacture of wind turbines, electric vehicles, and photovoltaic (PV) thin-film solar cells finds that these clean energy technologies may see supply disruptions for five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium, and yttrium) in the short term, though risks will generally decrease in the medium and long term.