Plant Design

Solar power has taken off the training wheels. Once an afterthought, solar photovoltaic (PV) generation has been one of the major sources of new capacity for several years. According to statistics from the

Two hyperbolic cooling towers rise 495 feet over Exelon Corp.’s Byron Generating Station about 110 miles west of Chicago, Ill. The towers help cool the two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors that are capable of generating up to 2,346 MW at the site. Like all classic wet transfer hyperbolic cooling towers (Figure 1), the Byron Generating […]

Creeped out and fatigued—that’s the state of many coal-fired boilers these days. Understanding failure mechanisms and suitable testing methods for identifying potential trouble can help you find problems before the problems find you. Even as the current regulatory environment pushes new power generation to utilize natural gas over other fuel sources, a significant amount of […]

Once again, a first-of-a-kind technology at a coal-fired power plant that is designed to reduce its greenhouse gas footprint has run into design, operational, and cost problems. This time, it’s Saskatchewan, Canada utility SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Carbon Capture project that’s facing scrutiny. (Earlier this week, an overdue precombustion carbon capture project, Mississippi Power’s Kemper County […]

Hydropower is booming, but unless you live in China, Latin America, or Africa, you may have missed it. Global installed capacity of hydroelectric generation has grown by more than 25% over the past decade

Before the official start of its Minds + Machines event in San Francisco this week, GE announced the launch of its “Digital Power Plant” during a briefing for the trade press. A formal announcement was to follow in the afternoon. Dick Ayres, general manager of software solutions, power generation services, explained that the company’s Predix […]

Emerging from decades of isolation, fragility, and conflict, Myanmar has, since 2011, ushered in a reformist government and embarked upon unprecedented political and economic reforms. Among those reforms has

Sharing borders with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, and Iraq, Jordan sits in a very precarious part of the world. To make matters worse, the country’s economy is among the smallest in the Middle East. Chronic

The Turkish electricity market was opened to competition in 2001 when the Turkish Grand National Assembly passed the Electricity Market Law, which unbundled its generation, transmission, and wholesale power

In the early 2010s, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) was staring down the barrel of dangerously low reserve margins, a combination of growing demand and an energy-only wholesale market that