News

American Electric Power has been named one of the top 50 companies for executive women by the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) for a second time.

Entergy Corp. accepted a national award on Mar. 3 for its work restoring power following a destructive ice storm last year in Arkansas. It is the 12th consecutive year Entergy has received a storm response award from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI).

Last week the first-ever ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit brought encouraging news to companies seeking to move their green technologies from the drawing board into the marketplace by announcing the availability of stimulus fund money. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E), part of the Department of Energy, is modeled on the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which led to developments including military and networking technologies.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced selections for the award of approximately $40 million in total to two teams led by Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Co. and San Diego–based General Atomics for conceptual design and planning work for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP).

Last Wednesday, Vermont’s state Senate voted to disallow the operation of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant after its current license expires March 21, 2012. The plant would change ownership if Entergy were allowed to spin off a new company consisting of its merchant nuclear fleet. The likelihood of that happening now looks very dim.

Both units of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland were offline for 10 days after water leaked through the plant’s roof on Feb. 18, causing a ground fault at Unit 1 that led to a series of events resulting in the automatic shutdown of both units.

The 365-MW Powder River Basin coal–fired Wyodak Power Plant near Gillette, Wyo., shut down last Friday after one of its 140-foot-tall scrubber vessels sustained significant structural damage.

In a statement last Thursday, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) recommended that power plants and industry discontinue the gas venting practice that resulted in the massive explosion on Feb. 7 at the Connecticut Kleen Energy plant, which was not yet online.

Concentrix Solar, a German supplier of concentrator photovoltaic systems, announced on Feb. 24 that it has signed a contract with Chevron Technology Ventures for the deployment of a 1-MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant to be installed at a Chevron Mining facility in Questa, New Mexico.

On Tuesday, Sweden’s enterprise minister, Maud Olofsson, announced in an editorial in Dagens Nyheter that his country would build 2,000 new wind turbines in 10 years for a total added capacity of 10 TWh by 2020. Sweden currently has the largest percentage (about 20%) of renewable energy in Europe and has a goal of supplying at least 50% of its energy from renewables by 2020.