News

Republican leaders of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson seeking information about the agency’s planned implementation of regulations affecting the electric power sector. Among other issues, they asked how the agency makes decisions and what analysis it uses to support the development of rules.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday conditionally offered a $90.6 million loan guarantee to support the construction of Cogentrix of Alamosa’s Alamosa Solar Generating Project. The 30-MW (net capacity) High Concentration Solar Photovoltaic (HCPV) generation project in south-central Colorado near the city of Alamosa will source over 80% of its components from the U.S, the DOE said.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) on Tuesday said it would supply two 350-MW steam turbines for installation at two large-scale coal-fired thermal plants in Morocco planned by Jorf Lasfar Energy Co., a power plant company owned by Abu Dhabi National Energy Co. (TAQA).

The 900-MW Hatfield power project, one of the UK’s first carbon capture and storage (CCS) coal-fired projects, was revived on Monday with the purchase of Powerfuel Power Ltd. by 2Co Energy, a new company backed by private equity fund firm TPG Capital. The project has now been renamed Don Valley Power Project, and it is set to begin operations between 2015 and 2016, capturing and storing up to 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year under the seabed of the North Sea.

Dominion plans to shutter two of the four units at Salem Harbor Power Station by the end of this year, and it will close the entire plant in Salem, Mass., by June 2014 because “pending environmental regulations and market conditions are making the power station uneconomical to operate,” the company announced today. The news comes on the heels of the announced closure of Dominion’s State Line Power Plant in Hammond, Ind.

Two newly built reactors reached important milestones in the past week. Reports say the second unit of the Ling Ao phase II nuclear plant in China’s Guangdong Province was connected to the grid on May 3, while Russian state-owned Atomstroyexport said Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant achieved criticality on May 8 and is now functioning at the minimum controlled power level.

On Sunday, Mexico’s labor secretary, Javier Lozano, announced that the bodies of all 14 miners had been retrieved from a coal mine in northern Mexico that collapsed last Tuesday after a methane explosion.

Japanese utility Chubu Electric Power Co. on Monday agreed to shut down all units at its Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture as soon as possible on safety concerns. The action includes idling Unit 4 and Unit 5, an advanced boiling water reactor that started commercial operation in 2005. The company, which is in the process of mothballing Units 1 and 2, said it would also postpone restarting Unit 3, which has been shut down for maintenance since November 2010.

 Marine energy technology firm Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) on Monday said it had begun ocean trials of the first of its new generation utility-scale PowerBuoy device, the PB150. The ocean trials are being conducted at a site approximately 33 nautical miles from Invergordon, off ScotlandÂ’s northeast coast, and are expected to last up to three months.

Dominion will at the end of next year close the 515-MW State Line Power Station in Hammond, Ind. The coal-fired plant has two units: The first fired up in 1955 and the second, in 1962.

Seventeen industry groups, including the Biomass Power Association (BPA) and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, last week petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to put on hold rules for industrial boilers while the agency reconsiders them.

In the latest of a string of mergers in the utility sector, Exelon on Thursday said it would buy Constellation Energy in a $7.9 billion deal. The agreement would bring together Exelon’s large nuclear fleet and Constellation’s “customer-facing” business, creating a platform for growth, the companies said in a joint statement.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) plans to conduct a large-scale grid security exercise later this year that will involve bulk North American power system owners and operators.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) on Tuesday filed draft rules with the state Legislature that could require large wood-burning power producers to meet strict greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards before they can receive state financing. The rules were modeled on conclusions reached in a June 2010 study that burning forest trees for power is not carbon neutral.

A law signed by Governor Chris Gregoire on Friday phases out coal-fired power production in Washington State with the closure of two coal boilers at TransAlta’s Centralia power plant.

In the past week, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano separately rejected suggestions that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) could be exempt from liability for damages at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant caused by the magnitude 9 quake and 14-meter tsunami wave on March 11.

Workers are scrambling to contain highly radioactive water and prevent another explosion at the quake-devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, the situation—which still remains “very serious,” according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—has improved only incrementally, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) told lawmakers.

The new Wheelift Self-Propelled Modular Transporter increases safety in spent fuel cask transport and alignment for NUHOMS-type ISFSI installations by reducing worker exposure because only one person is needed to operate the transporter from between 30 feet and 50 feet away. The transporter’s omni-directional steering and 10-inch lift capability enables the same operator to perform […]

Hamworthy Peabody Combustion’s new Q-jet Low NOx Burner Optimization Kit can be retrofitted to practically any existing burner, regardless of manufacturer, to increase efficiency and reduce maintenance. In addition, the Q-jet Kit eliminates the need to replace complete burner assemblies just to meet emissions requirements, saving time and money. A key feature is that the […]

Valve-maker Conval announced that its popular Camseal zero-leakage ball valves now have forged bodies. These new forged ball valves are available in half-inch through 4-inch sizes with top entry, socket weld, butt weld, and flanged ends. Pressure classes range from ASME 900 through 4500. Camseal forged ball valves feature zero body leakage, zero seat leakage, zero seal […]

A renewed attack on nuclear power immediately followed the March 11 catastrophe at the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex in Japan. At least one legislator and a multitude of anti-nuclear groups have demanded that the U.S. cease approval of all new nuclear plants for the foreseeable future and/or close our Mark I boiling water reactor (BWR) plants. This knee-jerk response adds nothing substantive to the nuclear safety debate. (Be sure to read our cover story for more on this issue.)

A Georgia administrative law judge has remanded an air permit for LS Power’s proposed 1,200-MW Longleaf coal-fired power plant to the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD). The judge found that the permit did not sufficiently limit pollution and ordered the regulatory body to amend the permit to include federally approved tests for five air pollutants.

Entergy Corp.’s Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant hit another hurdle on Tuesday as the Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC) rejected a 20-year power purchase contract at below market prices.

An annual report released on Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that assesses energy and technology market trends forecasts that if current laws and regulations remain unchanged, natural gas and renewables will see strong growth in the electricity sector. The report also suggests that expected regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will have an impact on the U.S. power sector, most notably on its fleet of coal-fired power plants.

The Canadian province of Saskatchewan on Tuesday approved construction of a C$1.24 billion project that will integrate and demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) at an aging Boundary Dam Power Station unit near Estevan.