Renewables

In the next 25 years, the world will turn increasingly to renewables and natural gas to meet energy demand, turning away from coal, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) World Energy

The project to build one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage systems started out as a bet—on Twitter. Last March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted to Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes

News about the rate at which new renewable power capacity is being added to grids around the world has been overshadowed by a remarkable trend that could revolutionize the renewables sector. Over the past few

Moving toward sustainable manufacture of photovoltaics, Dr. Manuela Schiek’s research group in Oldenburg, Germany, has discovered how the latest technology in confocal laser scanning microscopy is enhancing both accuracy and efficiency of their research into organic semiconductors and transparent electrodes. Harvesting energy directly from the sun in order to generate electricity, solar cells appear to […]

A Michigan utility will build a $500 million natural gas-fired power plant on the site of an existing coal-fired plant in Lansing, and plans to retire the coal plant and another coal-fired facility in the town in the next few years. Lansing’s Board of Water & Light (BWL) announced the project December 18. The city-owned […]

A utility group on December 18 agreed to keep a coal-fired power plant in Colorado Springs, Colorado, open for at least a few more years, and its members said they are prepared to move forward with distributed generation and could import power to make up for the eventual retirement of the Martin Drake Power Plant. […]

Aquila Capital has acquired Project Valhalla, one of the largest wind farm projects in Europe. The project will consist of 85 of the latest V136 4.2 MW Vestas turbines and thus have an installed capacity of 357 MW with an energy output of more than 1.1 TW when it is completed. It is located on […]

In Gaildorf, the first part of the pilot project for natural-energy storage supplies green energy with immediate effect. It starts with four wind turbines, which will produce wind power with a total nominal output of 13.6 MW. Another 16 MW from the integrated pumped storage power plant will be added at the end of 2018. […]

Oman recently began operating a Wärtsilä-built power plant in the northern part of the country, part of more than $1 billion in power and energy projects being developed in the Arab nation. The Musandam Independent Power Project (IPP) is a 120-MW natural gas-fired plant (Figure 1) that can use light fuel oil as a secondary […]

A report released December 14 by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) says power generation from natural gas-fired units and renewable sources such as solar and wind will provide enough electricity to offset the closures of U.S. coal-fired and nuclear power plants in the next decade. The agency’s 10-year outlook, part of its 2017 […]

Supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) cycles—which are inching closer to commercial applications for waste heat recovery, concentrating solar power, nuclear, and fossil energy—offer higher thermal efficiencies and power density than conventional steam Rankine and Air Brayton cycles in use today for power generation. But to realize these potentially game-changing cycles, common challenges associated with turbomachinery must […]

Kevin McIntyre was sworn in as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on December 7, just more than a month after his nomination to the post was approved by the Senate. He takes over from interim chair Neil Chatterjee, who will remain at FERC as a commissioner. The agency that regulates transmission and wholesale […]

General Electric (GE) said December 7 it will cut 12,000 jobs in its power unit as the company continues to struggle with changes in the global power market. The company in a statement said the staff reductions will save $1 billion in 2018. “Traditional power markets including gas and coal have softened,” the company said, […]

The Solar Energy Industries Associations (SEIA) on December 5 released an anti-tariff plea specially tailored to President Donald Trump. The “America First Plan for Solar Energy” urges the president to reject tariffs proposed for imported crystalline silicon photovoltaic (CSPV) solar panels. SEIA’s plea comes as the president mulls over the whether or not to impose […]

The world’s first floating offshore wind farm, located roughly 25 kilometers off the coast of Peterhead, Scotland, powered up on October 18, delivering electricity to the Scottish grid. Hywind Scotland was

The state-owned North-West Power Generation Co. Ltd. (NWPGCL) in Bangladesh in early November announced plans to build a 3,600-MW regasification liquefied natural gas (LNG) combined cycle power plant in the

Construction Set to Begin on First Nuclear Plant in Turkey. Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, in mid-October said construction of the country’s first nuclear power plant would

Southeast Asia offers rich renewable sector opportunities, recently exemplified by Chevron’s multibillion-dollar sale of its Indonesian and Philippines geothermal projects, and the purchase of Equis Energy

In the early morning of May 1, 2017, Block Island, Rhode Island, shut off the diesel generators that had powered the island for nearly a century. The lights on the island flickered off before turning back on

On September 26, 2017, UK Climate Change Minister Claire Perry marched across a slightly muddy field to a 10-MW solar farm built by British renewable energy developer Anesco. The high-profile visit included a

The Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, part of a hydro-solar integration in the high desert on the Tibetan Plateau, has helped the country move toward its ambitious targets for increasing generation from cleaner fuel

The 330-MW Sarulla Geothermal Power Plant in Indonesia took decades to develop. Backed by a multinational financing effort along with support from the Indonesian government, the $1.6 billion project may be on

Successfully designing and constructing a hydropower plant, while accounting for site space constraints and not disrupting commercial traffic on a busy waterway, presented challenges for a Midwestern utility

The solar industry has the opportunity to integrate intelligent technology, including some that was originally developed for conventional energy resources, into its solar systems. Most parts of a solar farm

Cross-border trade in energy—electricity, natural gas, and oil—has been an unanticipated boon to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, exceeding $140 billion in 2015. The Trump administration’s antipathy toward

When is a D+ grade acceptable? The answer should be never. But that’s the state of the U.S. power grid according to the 2017 infrastructure report card issued by the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE). And the impact of this year’s catastrophic hurricane season only reinforced its vulnerability. Given the billions of dollars of […]

The bell has tolled for another U.S. coal-fired power plant. WEC Energy Group on November 28 said it would shutter its Pleasant Prairie facility in Wisconsin, another victim of energy market dynamics that include low natural gas prices, falling demand for electricity, and the continuing move by utilities toward renewable power generation sources such as […]

A U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysis of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2015 from U.S. coal consumption shows 43 states recorded lower emissions year-over-year, with just four states showing increased levels, while three states and the District of Columbia had little to no emissions. On the whole, the EIA report released in mid-November comparing […]

Weak earnings associated with General Electric’s (GE’s) underperforming $10.1 billion investment in Alstom have prompted the giant conglomerate to rejigger its power business and lean more heavily on other segments. GE Power, the company’s long-standing and lucrative business unit that has installed 1.6 GW of the world’s installed capacity over its 125-year history, has also […]

GE and Exelon announced a multi-year agreement to deploy GE’s portfolio of Predix software solutions across the energy company’s six electric utilities to further enhance reliability and efficient service to its more than 10 million customers. Exelon’s six utilities will use these advanced analytics to further strengthen transmission and delivery systems. POWER Executive Editor Aaron […]