News

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm will be President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to run the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), POWER learned Dec. 15. She is poised take over the agency at a time when the DOE grapples with the nation’s move away from electricity generation from fossil fuels, and toward the use of more renewable […]

General Electric (GE) has taken a marked step to position itself in the global fight against climate change, advocating for immediate and effective power sector decarbonization through a replacement of coal-fired power generation with a combination of renewables and natural gas-fired power.  The company laid out its position on Dec. 15 in a wide-ranging white […]

California is set to host one of the world’s largest standalone renewable hybrid projects. Slated to come online in the fourth quarter of 2022, the Edwards & Sanborn project in Kern County will feature 1,118 MW of solar and 2,165 MWh of energy storage.  Renewable developer Terra-Gen on Dec. 10 announced an agreement with engineering […]

The two-unit expansion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia reached another milestone as Georgia Power received the first shipment of nuclear fuel for Unit 3 of the project. The utility on Dec. 9 said receipt of the fuel follows completion and inspection of several construction areas at the site in Waynesboro, Georgia. Those […]

General Electric (GE) has agreed to pay a $200 million penalty to settle claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company misled investors when it failed to disclose material information related to its power and insurance businesses. In an order on Dec. 9 capping an investigation that the SEC opened in […]

Integrating electric vehicles (EVs) with the power grid has become a focus for utilities, particularly in areas with large concentrations of EVs. It also is another way for utilities to expand their business models, as they partner with companies involved with charging stations and residential energy storage applications. EnergyHub, a distributed energy resources (DERs) management […]

By 2025, the economics of low-carbon generation technologies are poised to disrupt conventional fossil fuel generation so dramatically, onshore wind could have the lowest levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) on average, and nuclear power could emerge as the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs.  Those are key findings in the Dec. 9-issued 2020 […]

In a significant but controversial final action, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Dec. 7 retained its existing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for both fine and coarse particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10). While the EPA said the decision came “after careful review and consideration of the most recent available scientific evidence and technical […]

A distributed energy power plant, designed to help bring more reliability to California’s power grid, is being developed by a company whose investors include Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The project when fully developed would be the world’s largest residential virtual power plant (VPP). Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), a group that builds, owns, operates, […]

The struggling U.S. coal industry, decimated by falling demand for the fuel from the power generation sector, and hit hard by low prices during the coronavirus pandemic, saw two more mining companies declare bankruptcy this week. White Stallion Energy, which operates in Indiana and Illinois, and Lighthouse Resources, a coal company with mines in Wyoming […]