Solar

The history of power generation is long and convoluted, marked by myriad technological milestones—conceptual and technical—from hundreds of contributors. Many accounts begin power’s story at the demonstration of electric conduction by Englishman Stephen Gray, which led to the 1740 invention of glass friction generators in Leyden, Germany. This quiz is designed to test your knowledge […]

Though some countries, including the U.S., have moved to support coal-fired power generation over the past year, investments in renewable energy continued to rise, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The research group on January 16 said global investment in clean energy such as wind and solar reached about $333.5 […]

An executive with the parent company of Tampa Electric said the utility plans to seek regulatory approval to convert its Big Bend Power Station in Florida, the oldest and last major coal-fired facility in its fleet, to natural gas. Rob Bennett, speaking at a breakfast gathering in Tampa on January 12, said an engineering analysis […]

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its first look at expected power generation in 2019, and its conclusions are much the same as those it expects in 2018—the use of natural gas to produce electricity will continue to rise, and the use of coal will continue to decline. EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook, released January […]

Florida Power & Light (FPL) began the new year by opening four new solar power plants, along with officially retiring one of its two remaining coal-fired plants in the state. The utility on January 8 said the four solar plants began operating on January 1, 2018. They are the Horizon Solar Energy Center, in Alachua […]

It is estimated that nearly 240 million Indians currently do not have access to electricity. In many cases that also means a lack of access to adequate health care or educational opportunities. It is no

There are challenges facing the power industry in 2018, but there are also a lot of exciting opportunities. Renewable energy and gas-fired generation are expected to continue growing, but changes in federal

Utilities across the U.S. are aware of beneficial electrification (BE) programs, but wide adoption has been held up by uncertainty about their potential and broader role in the evolving regulated utility

There are many tools available to assist companies as they gain a better grasp on how their energy is being used, and what that means for the goal of efficient energy management. Not all solutions are created

As power plants and substations become more connected, the need for rugged networking equipment built to withstand tough conditions is amplified. The military has already gone through the growing pains, so

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

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 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

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 […]

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 […]

U.S. utilities continue to announce closures of financially troubled and older coal-fired power plants even as government officials work on a bailout plan to keep them operating. Owners of a coal plant in Montana that has only been online since 2006 informed the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) last week of plans to shutter the […]

Virginia regulators are ready to consider a proposal to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast, becoming the 10th state in the nation’s largest carbon-trading market. The move comes as newly elected governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, prepares to take office in a state where the Republican-led legislature has shot down previous […]

Utilities across the country are gearing up for an attack on the power grid November 15 and 16. Thankfully, it’s only a drill. But in the event of an actual emergency, a real physical and cyberattack on the U.S. electricity infrastructure, GridEx IV—a biennial exercise conducted by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC)—will help […]

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) World Energy Outlook 2017 (WEO). As in previous years, the report makes predictions based on different scenarios. This year’s include a New Policies Scenario, which […]

ROCKLIN, Calif., November 14, 2017—SMA today announced that 13 Sunny Central Storage inverters are being used in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) Beacon Energy Storage System, a 20 MW battery storage project at the Beacon Solar Plant in the Mojave Desert. The new storage project will be owned and operated by […]