T&D

NTPC Commissions First Unit of Lara Project. The first unit of the 4,000-MW super thermal power project in Chhattisgarh in India was commissioned in late March by NTPC. The coal-fired plant, a $4.62

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) on April 30 updated its summer 2018 planning reserve margin to 11% based on resource updates, but it warned that the regional grid serving most of Texas could still suffer rotating outages under extreme conditions. In its final Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy (SARA) report for the upcoming […]

DENVER — At this year’s IEEE T&D Conference (Booth #1242), Siemens announced a strengthened digital T&D portfolio across key areas including substations, transformer maintenance and grid planning. Leveraging Siemens’ global focus on the growth of the Internet of Things in industry and infrastructure, the company is incorporating digitally-driven solutions into its grid-facing businesses including digital […]

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. (NNPC) in December 2017 announced a plan to build three natural gas-fired power plants in the country, thanks to a $2.8 billion pipeline project that would bring natural gas from the southern part of the African nation to its northern region. The plants, sited in Abuja, Kaduna, and Kano, would […]

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) standard on physical security—known as Critical Infrastructure Protection-014 (CIP-014)—includes six basic requirements, but perhaps the most

U.S. utilities continue to send workers to Puerto Rico to help restore that country’s electricity and rebuild its power infrastructure, a task that continues more than four months after back-to-back hurricanes left nearly all of the island in the dark. The Puerto Rican government this week said 83% of the island’s generation capacity has been […]

A control system that smooths out inter-area oscillations—a problem affecting power systems connected by relatively weak tie lines—has been successfully demonstrated by researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and Montana Tech University. The system that uses smart grid technology could allow utilities to push more power through transmission lines, possibly nixing the need for new transmission […]

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

Unmanned aerial systems—drones—have quickly found their place in the power sector. But as the industry moves out of test cases and experiments, and into full implementation of drones, it is facing a whole

A leading-edge operations center opens in New York The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has taken a huge step forward in increasing the efficiency of its operations with the opening of its new Integrated Smart Operations Center (iSOC), which harnesses the capabilities of state-of-the-art digitization technologies. The center, located in White Plains, N.Y., was officially […]

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 […]

Siemens has launched a new direct-current (DC) transmission system for alternating current (AC) grids of between 30 kV and 150 kV. The medium-voltage system that can bridge distances of up to 125 miles is designed to help grid entities handle ever-growing volumes of power fed into the distribution system from distributed and renewable power. The […]

Recently, two epic hurricanes—Harvey and Irma—struck North America with extremely destructive force. Harvey first made landfall in the U.S. near Rockport, Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a unique large-scale power converter that can swiftly switch between multiple energy sources to help

Mexico’s energy reform, which began in 2013, has opened up key parts of the country’s electricity sector to new market participants, foreign investors, and innovative technology. Prior to the reform

India Joins IEA as an Association Country. India joined the International Energy Agency (IEA) as an association country on March 30, marking a significant move for the country into global energy affairs. The

Freshly reeling from a statewide blackout, South Australia’s government in March released an energy plan that seeks to cut its reliance on an electricity interconnector with eastern Australia that feeds the

A flood of renewable capacity in the European Union is forcing member countries to consider grid upgrades that offer a more substantial power supply management role to distribution system operators. Lee

A three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit on April 18 unanimously upheld Order No. 1000, denying multiple challenges by New England power firms and state regulators to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) controversial mandate that requires utilities to remove certain “right of first refusal” provisions from existing tariffs and agreements. The decision in Emera […]

Two years after the Energy Union was launched as a strategy to help the European Union (EU) provide secure, sustainable, competitive, and affordable energy, the 28-member bloc is seeing a precipitous drop in

A power plant’s isolated phase bus is generally reliable, and therefore, maintenance is frequently overlooked. However, the system is too important to neglect. Assessing its condition during minor outages

There have been numerous pronouncements recently about the upcoming demise of the bulk power grid as consumers are projected to move toward decentralized green energy sources. We don’t believe that the end

Technology advancements and new regulatory requirements could reshape how power plant owners operate and maintain large power transformers. Experts outline emerging strategies and call attention to overlooked

California’s excess of solar power challenges the statewide independent system operator’s ability to balance its system without curtailing low-carbon supplies and ramping up natural gas generation. It’s

Remote and online monitoring of plant performance parameters is an important step toward a fully connected plant, but alone it’s not enough to exploit the real value in the Industrial Internet of Things, speakers at POWER’s inaugural Connected Plant Conference on February 15 in Dallas said. Randy Bickford, president and CTO of software firm Expert […]

The U.S. may be getting its first overhead 600-kV high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) line in more than 20 years. Developers are advancing the Plains and Eastern Clean Line, a 720-mile (1,150-kilometer [km]) project that could deliver 4 GW of renewable power from the Oklahoma Panhandle region to states in the Southeast. The project is spearheaded by […]

The entire state of South Australia suffered a blackout on the afternoon of September 28. The cause of the event has been disputed, but it has left Australians in a raging debate about the state of the country’s electricity system and policies that will shape its future power mix. The so-called “Black System” event that […]

As energy storage becomes more ubiquitous and projects grow in size and capacity, utilities of all types are exploring the best ways of putting it to use across the grid. The opportunities are large, but so are the challenges, according to a panel of executives who spoke at Energy Storage North America in October. New […]

“We’re at a very challenging time,” said former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Tony Clark at the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) on November 14. We have a “need for infrastructure, but it’s more difficult to get it sited and built than ever before.” Clark’s comment, which he […]