News

The start of operations at the Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima’s (TVO’s) Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant, Europe’s first EPR, which is under construction in Finland, could be postponed until 2014. The $4 billion project, originally due to come online in 2009, is years behind schedule and has been consistently plagued with faulty materials and planning problems since construction began in 2005.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens on Thursday filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which was finalized by the EPA this summer. On Monday, Xcel Energy also filed suit against the EPA, asking the agency to reconsider its methodology for calculating allowable emissions.

Instead of transferring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) its authority to conduct congestion studies and establish a process for designating national transmission corridors under section 216 of the Federal Power Act (FPA), as it was considering last month, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Department of Energy would work “more closely” with FERC in reviewing new transmission projects.

An analysis released by ISO New England on Thursday identifies several challenges that could dramatically change New England’s grid, including the retirement of generators and the integration of renewable resources.

PPL Electric Utilities on Tuesday said it would build 57 miles of a new 230-kV power line from the Wilkes-Barre area in Pennsylvania to an area west of Hawley, Wayne County, as well as three new substations to improve service for homes and businesses in northeast Pennsylvania and the Poconos.

ICF International, a consultancy group that earlier this year had predicted 68 GW of coal-fired power plants could retire by 2030 as a result of finalized and proposed regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on Monday downgraded its retirement projections to 50 GW.

Hours before the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) controversial advanced energy loan guarantee program (funded under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) expired on Friday, the agency finalized seven loan guarantees totaling more than $5.9 billion. Projects include solar power facilities in California, Nevada, and Arizona, and a bioenergy project in Kansas.

Sixty projects in 25 states were awarded a total of $156 million on Thursday under the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) agency. They focus on accelerating innovations in clean technology while increasing America’s competitiveness in rare earth alternatives and breakthroughs in biofuels, thermal storage, grid controls, and solar power electronics.

Ameren Energy Resources (AER) Co. on Tuesday announced it would shutter its coal- and oil-fired Meredosia and Hutsonville energy centers in Illinois by 2011, citing concerns about rising costs related to the compliance of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR).

Just weeks ago, President Obama signaled he would veto the TRAIN Act—a bill that could indefinitely delay implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution and the utility MACT rules. This week, the White House said that it “strongly opposed” two bills that would delay the compliance period for reducing pollution from industrial boilers, solid waste incinerators, and cement plants.

California’s Supreme Court last week gave the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) the green light to proceed with a statewide cap-and-trade program that seeks to cut California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday extended a construction permit for the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) unfinished Unit 1 reactor at the Bellefonte site near Scottsboro, Ala. The agency last week also listed actions Dominion must take before restarting operation of the quake-hit twin-reactor North Anna nuclear power plant near Louisa, Va.

Stirling Energy Systems, the Scottsdale, Ariz., maker of a reflective dish that concentrates sunlight onto a Stirling engine, has reportedly filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy—making it the fourth solar company to fall this year amid the plummeting price of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels.

BeamCap’s signature product, the BeamCap, prevents dust accumulation on I-beams, structural steel members, pipes, cable trays, and other difficult-to-clean areas. BeamCap pieces completely enclose the structures, eliminating horizontal surfaces where dust consistently builds up. This eliminates the need for cleaning in hard-to-reach places and greatly reduces the potential for fires and secondary explosions. The aluminum […]

Aqua-Vu, a provider of portable underwater viewing systems, introduced the Claw 360, a device designed for the detection and removal of objects in an underwater environment. The Claw 360 incorporates a Sharp 520 color camera that can rotate 360 degrees to scan the environment. Lighting is provided by high-intensity LEDs that rotate with the camera. […]

Advance Products & Systems’ new Kleerband Flange Protectors and Radolid Protection caps protect bolts, nuts, and flange faces on raised-face or full-face flanges in conditions where extreme corrosion occurs, such as at gas plants, pump stations, and above- and below- ground installations. Kleerband is a patented transparent polymer band with grease injection fittings and a […]

Siemens Gets $1 Billion Order to Build Gas Power Plants in Thailand. Siemens on Aug. 17 said it received two orders worth $1 billion from Thailand for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) of combined cycle power plants. The firm will build Chana Block 2 in the province of Songkhla and Wang Noi Block 4 […]

Global Training Solutions Inc. released an interactive, self-paced, and fully customizable electronic training program to achieve compliance with the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC’s) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) security standards. The company designed its NERC CIP Information Security E-Learning Series on open-web standards, sharable content object reference model (SCORM) compliance, and advanced technical concepts. […]

The new NLB 605 series of water jet pump units from NLB Corp. gives users a powerful combination of ultra-high pressure and high horsepower in a rugged unit they can convert to a variety of operating pressures. The range of the NLB 605 Series has been expanded to include eight operating pressures from 4,000 psi […]

The BelGAS division of Marsh Bellofram Corp. introduced Type P627, a high-performance, spring-loaded, direct-operating high-flow gas regulator that is designed to control both low- and high-output pressure in oil and gas applications. Designed for maximum durability, Marsh Bellofram BelGAS Type P627 regulators are compact and offered in multi-position body and spring case configurations. Units offer […]

Just days before the Energy Department’s advanced energy loan guarantee program funded under 2009 stimulus law is set to expire—and amid an investigation of Solyndra, the California-based solar manufacturer that received the Obama administration’s first loan guarantee—the DOE today finalized a $737 million loan guarantee for the development of a 110-MW concentrating solar power tower facility in Nevada.

The DOE on Friday finalized a partial guarantee for up to a $350 million loan guarantee to support a geothermal power project sponsored by Ormat Nevada. The 113-MW project comprises three geothermal power facilities and could increase Nevada’s geothermal power production by nearly 25% the DOE said.

The renewed flurry of loan guarantees from the DOE this past week included a finalized partial guarantee for a $168.9 million loan to Granite Reliable Power for a 99-MW wind generation project that is expected to become New Hampshire’s largest wind farm.

The Energy Department on Tuesday issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that could allow $450 million of federal funding to be used to help build Summit Texas Clean Eneryg’s 400-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant planned for construction just west of Midland-Odessa,Texas.

Dominion, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Virginia Tech, Alstom Power, and maritime engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol last week received a two-year $500,000 grant from the DOE to seek out ways to reduce the cost of offshore wind generation by at least 25%.

Progress Energy Carolinas will officially shut down its 177-MW coal-fired W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant near Lumberton, N.C., at the end of the month—the first such retirement under the utility’s fleet-modernization program that includes disassembly of nearly 30% of the firm’s coal generating fleet in North Carolina.

A new standard devised by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in response to the February 2010 Kleen Energy Systems power plant explosion prohibits the use of flammable gas as a cleaning agent for cleaning the interior of pipes—the practice thought to have caused the blast that killed six workers in Middletown, Conn., and injured nearly 50 others.

In a major development, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Office of the Inspector General (IG) today said a key document underpinning the agency’s so-called “endangerment finding”—the determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and legally supports agency rules that regulate carbon dioxide emissions—required a “more rigorous peer review than occurred.”

The installed cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S. plunged 17% in 2010 compared to the year before, and by an additional 11% within the first six months of 2011, a new report from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Thursday said 27 rural electric cooperative utilities would receive $603 million in loans for generation and transmission projects, distribution facilities, and smart grid technologies. The loans are expected to finance rural electric utility improvements in 18 states.