Renewables

The Earth is a tremendous source of power. We’re sitting on a dynamic ball of fire, from which only a few regions have been able to extract energy since the 15th century. In recent decades, geothermal has been heralded as the most promising clean energy option and also a disappointment for the lack of implementation. […]

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has completed its designation of an offshore wind energy area in the Gulf of Maine. The BOEM, in a notice published in the Federal Register on March 18, said two million acres has been earmarked for development in that region. The BOEM in its announcement said the […]

Governments worldwide are investing in hydrogen production as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and help decarbonize the energy sector. The U.S. Dept. of Energy last year published its U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, highlighting the need for collaboration across multiple agencies to push national decarbonization goals. The European Commission in […]

A major Indiana utility said it’s preparing to switch its remaining coal-fired power plant to burn natural gas. AES Indiana on March 12 said the two coal-burning units at its Petersburg Generating Station, in Pike County in southwestern Indiana about 100 miles west of Louisville, Kentucky, would stop using coal and start using natural gas […]

The winter heating season, which is often defined as November through March in the U.S., is coming to an end with natural gas inventories 37% above the five-year average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Reduced consumption in the residential and commercial sectors this winter has been blamed for the high natural gas […]

Virtual power plants (VPPs), as aggregations of dispatchable distributed energy resources (DERs), can deliver grid services ranging from resource adequacy to reliability at scale—all while making energy more affordable. Yet, despite their merits, the U.S. utility industry is yet to leverage the full potential of these readily available, affordable, customer-sited resources to add flexibility to the grid. Of course, the decision to incorporate […]

Officials in the UK said the country will need to build new natural gas-fired power plants beyond 2030 in order to ensure a reliable supply of energy and avoid blackouts. Energy Security Secretary Claire Coutinho on March 12 said gas-fired units able to provide baseload power generation will be needed as a backup to renewable […]

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) explains that community solar, also known as shared solar or solar gardens, is a distributed solar energy deployment model that allows customers to buy or lease part of a larger, off-site shared solar photovoltaic (PV) system. It says community solar arrangements allow customers to enjoy advantages of solar energy […]

The 2.6-GW Drax Power Station in northeastern England—once Western Europe’s largest coal-fired power plant—is poised to pioneer bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), a negative emissions

The importance of a reliable and resilient power supply continues to grow, and so does the need to control energy costs. That’s why more institutions want power systems that support operational efficiency