News

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.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) stunned officials of Duke Energy and Progress Energy on Thursday when it refused to unconditionally approve a $13.7 billion merger deal of the two companies that would have created the largest U.S. electric utility. The regulatory body cited concerns about the merger’s impact on power markets in North and South Carolina—where both companies are based—for its decision.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which will require about 40% of all coal-fired power plants in the U.S. to deploy pollution control technologies to curb emissions of mercury and other air pollutants such as arsenic and cyanide within three years. The regulation has been called the “most expensive order” aimed at companies that has been considered by the Obama administration.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week issued a final rule amending its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) to include five more states in the ozone season nitrogen oxide (NOx) program. The final rule adds Oklahoma to the CSAPR program (for its ozone-season NOx emissions only), bringing the total number of states covered by the rule to 28.

Nine months after the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture was rocked by a magnitude 9.0 quake and an ensuing massive tsunami that plunged it into the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, 25 years earlier, Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, on Friday said in a televised address that the plant’s four afflicted units have been brought to a state of cold shutdown. However, the crisis is far from over, he said.

A report was released last week by the European Commission that outlines possible ways European Union (EU) members can ensure energy security and competitiveness while meeting an ambitious goal of reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Duke-American Transmission Co. (DATC) will take charge of the design and development of a proposed 950-mile 500-kV transmission line that would deliver wind energy generated in eastern Wyoming to California and the southwestern U.S.

Entergy Corp. last week agreed to divest and then merge its electric transmission business with the nation’s largest independent electric transmission company, ITC Holdings Corp. If the merger is completed, and ITC integrates Entergy’s 15,700 miles of interconnected transmission lines, that company could become one of the largest transmission companies in the U.S. with more than 30,000 miles of transmission lines from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast.

Toronto-based Bruce Power on Monday officially abandoned plans to build a new nuclear power plant in Alberta that has been under consideration by the company since 2007, saying it would instead focus investments on increasing reliability and safety at its existing Bruce Power nuclear generating station in Ontario.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week ruled that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) discriminated against wind generators when it used its transmission market power to curtail wind power after high river flows and high wind last May and June caused generation on the BPA system to exceed power demand.

NRG Energy brought development of a key offshore wind project off the coast of Delaware to a screeching halt on Monday. Saying the development of a new domestic offshore industry was ridden with “monumental challenges,” the Princeton, N.J., company cited its inability to find an investment partner, a lack of federal loan guarantees, and the looming expiration of wind tax incentives as key reasons behind its decision.

A report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week finds that the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) financial condition could hamper its ability to fund capital improvements—including a 20-year plan to meet power demand with more natural gas generation, three new nuclear reactors, and expanding energy efficiency programs.

Vattenfall last week scrapped a much-awaited €1.5 billion ($2 billion) carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration project it planned to build and begin operating by 2015 in the German federal state of Brandenburg, blaming “insufficient will in German federal politics.”

The UK’s Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and Environment Agency today issued separate interim design approvals for AREVA and EDF’s EPR and Westinghouse’s AP1000 nuclear reactor designs, saying they are satisfied with how the designers of both reactors plan to resolve a number of remaining issues. The decision establishes that the reactors are acceptable for use in the UK, but reactor vendors must first clear remaining issues and take on board lessons learned from the Fukushima accident before being allowed to build new plants in the UK.