News

AES has begun construction of what will be the largest energy storage project in Europe when it comes online later this year in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. The 10-MW/40-MWh Kilroot Advancion Energy Storage Array is being added to the AES UK & Ireland Kilroot Power Station in County Antrim along the country’s east coast. The grid-connected […]

Talen Energy Corp. announced on July 20 that it has agreed to acquire MACH Gen LLC, which owns three combined cycle, natural gas–fired power plants with more than 2.5 GW of total capacity for $1.175 billion. Talen Energy was formed on June 1 when PPL Corp. spun off its PPL Energy Supply business and combined […]

Renewables giant SunEdison will acquire emerging distributed energy firm Vivint Solar’s 523-MW rooftop solar portfolio in a $2.2 billion acquisition deal that signals momentum for the business model that has challenged the bottom lines of traditional utilities. SunEdison and Vivint Solar signed a definitive merger agreement on July 20. It will involve the acquisition of Vivint […]

Emerging energy technologies such as rooftop solar, microgrids, and distributed generation could adversely affect reliability of the nation’s grid, a new report from the Electric Markets Research Foundation (EMRF) warns.  The non-profit research entity whose mission it is to fund studies on significant electric market issues notes in its report, “Changing Uses of the Electric […]

Interstate Power and Light (IPL) will be forced to spend $620 million to retire 10 coal-fired units and retire, refuel, or install pollution controls at several others in Iowa under a settlement reached with the federal government.  The Alliant Energy subsidiary has long anticipated the settlement announced on July 15 by the Environmental Protection Agency […]

In a report released this week, M.J. Bradley & Associates found that in 2013 power plant SO2 emissions were 80% lower and NOx emissions were down 74% compared to releases in 1990—the year Congress passed major amendments to the Clean Air Act. The report, Benchmarking Air Emissions of the 100 Largest Electric Power Producers in […]

Seven gasification projects will receive about $7.5 million in funding from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Energy Technology Laboratory. The projects will reduce the cost of coal conversion and mitigate the environmental impacts of fossil-fueled power generation, the DOE said in a statement on July 14. The projects fall under two subtopic areas: development […]

A cyber attack on the U.S. power grid could potentially destroy dozens of generating units, leave 93 million people without power for weeks, and result in nearly $250 billion dollars in economic damage, according to a new report from Lloyd’s of London. Prepared to enable insurers to gauge and prepare for potential risks, the report […]

King Coal has lost his crown—at least temporarily. Electricity generation data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for April 2015 showed the U.S. generated 92.5 TWh from natural gas and 88.8 TWh from coal, the first time the nation has gotten the largest share of its power from anything other than coal. That represents a […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) has suspended funding for the Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) polygeneration clean coal plant, saying the company has failed to meet required milestones, according to a report in E&E Greenwire on July 10. The HECA project, in development since the late 2000s, is intended as a next-generation integrated gasification combined cycle […]