Technology

California’s governor demanded an investigation into the cause of a series of power outages—the first since an energy crisis in 2001—that blacked out parts of the state in recent days.  California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has struggled to ensure reliability since Friday, Aug. 14, when, amid triple-digit temperatures, it declared a statewide Stage 2 Emergency, […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved to redesignate four new areas of Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas as being in attainment of air quality standards for sulfur dioxide (SO2).  The proposed actions issued over the past week provide a potential reprieve for several coal power plants, which would have needed costly pollution controls to […]

DARMSTADT, Germany (Aug. 18, 2020) – Brüel & Kjær Vibro, one of the leading worldwide independent suppliers of condition monitoring solutions for rotating machinery, has launched the VIBROPORT 8000 (VP-8000) Portable Vibration Analyzer for rotating and reciprocating equipment. The new VP-8000 is a specially configured and packaged version of Brüel & Kjær Vibro’s VC-8000, which […]

Baton Rouge, LA (August 17, 2020) – Setpoint Integrated Solutions announces SNAP, an online booking tool that gives customers easy, remote access to technical experts. Setpoint SNAP is a scheduling tool that quickly connects users with technical and product experts through virtual meetings or phone calls. As part of an ongoing effort to improve the […]

Investors in the global power and utilities sector embraced agendas that created long-term value during the first half of this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic roiled the world. Recent activity points to several interesting trends that will likely persist in a post-crisis world and may even accelerate change in the sector, new analyses from global […]

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) are teaming on a notable five-year-long initiative to accelerate development and demonstrate low-carbon technologies that they say are needed to help private companies and governments achieve increasingly ambitious decarbonization goals by 2050. The Low-Carbon Resources Initiative (LCRI), officially launched on Aug. 10, is […]

GOLDEN, CO (August 12, 2020) – U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette today announced the launch of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). ARIES is a cutting-edge research platform that will allow NREL researchers and the scientific community to address […]

It’s an article of faith in large parts of the U.S.—at least among power industry people—that organized and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)–regulated “merchant” interstate power markets are the best way to ensure a sufficient supply of electricity, as well as to ensure fair and equitable prices for ratepayers. On that basis, large areas of […]

The transformation of the power landscape involves more than just generation. The distribution of electricity is being changed as well, with technology designed to make electrical systems safer, more reliable, and more efficient. Atom Power, which last year introduced the first digital circuit breaker, is among the companies engineering change in the power sector. Atom, […]

Technology combines panelboards and switchboards with intelligent circuit protection Integrated solutions provide real-time insight into circuit breaker health to avoid costly downtime  PITTSBURGH… Power management company Eaton today announced the first panelboards and switchboards in the industry to feature real-time breaker health monitoring with the launch of the Pow-R-Line Xpert® family of intelligent panelboards and […]

The Utah Taxpayers Association has urged cities and towns that have subscribed to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) small modular reactor (SMR) project to withdraw from the venture before a Sept. 14 deadline that would lock them into a share of billions of dollars in costs associated with the undertaking. Rusty Cannon, vice […]

“Things keep going,” Brent Tomamichel, fleet manager of Southeast Power (Figure 1), said when asked to describe the current state of the power industry. “Our industry is unique in that way; no matter what is happening in the world, everyone needs and wants their power on.”  If you’re one of the more than 1.9 million people […]

Field service workers often log long hours at remote job sites where no two days are the same. To support daily tasks, whether they be at a power plant, oil rig, or other hard to access environments, advanced technologies have become more commonplace to get the job done. With the rapidly evolving nature of technology […]

Entergy to deploy best-in-class technologies and program management services Large commercial and industrial electricity consumers to receive financial incentives simply by participating in the fully automated demand response program HOUSTON, August 4, 2020 — Honeywell today announced that it will manage Entergy New Orleans’ Large Commercial & Industrial (Large C&I) Demand Response (DR) program. DR provides […]

A remarkable retrofit at Xuzhou Unit 3 boosted the 320-MW subcritical coal unit’s efficiency to beyond 43.56%—higher than all existing Chinese supercritical units, and even many ultrasupercritical units

Coal power may be struggling in some parts of the world, but it’s doing just fine in China. New plants are coming online featuring state-of-the-art technology. Two ultrasupercritical units added at the

Indian power giant NTPC commissioned the second unit of the vast 1,320-MW Khargone Super Thermal Power Project in Madhya Pradesh this March, completing its first ultrasupercritical power plant. The project’s

Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (DHIC) this summer made major strides to establish itself at the core of South Korea’s strategy to become only the fifth country to own an independent gas turbine

Nuclear power plants approaching license expiration are faced with three options: obtain initial license renewal to continue operations (nine U.S. units have not yet received an extension of their initial

Virtual power plants are becoming a driving force in the power sector. This article explains how they enable utilities and aggregators to pool production from multiple plants and distributed sources, achieving

The power generation industry is constantly evolving, with advanced technologies becoming more ubiquitous in power plants. Along with this evolution, instrumentation and control equipment continues to be key

What will it realistically take to ready a fission surface power system (FSP)—a small (maybe modular) nuclear reactor—for deployment on the moon by 2027? That’s essentially what Battelle Energy Alliance LLC (BEA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are asking the private sector in an interesting request for […]

GE Gas Power and Uniper have agreed to roll out a detailed decarbonization roadmap that may entail hydrogen-friendly upgrades to all GE gas turbines and compressors at the German generation giant’s gas power plants and gas storage facilities across Europe.  Under the agreement, GE Gas Power and Uniper will form a joint working group to […]

Center to Develop Innovative Cybersecurity Best Practices that Will Serve as a Model for Deployment at Other Public and Private Utilities NYPA’s Advanced Grid Laboratory for Energy to Test Cybersecurity Solutions, Pilot New Systems WHITE PLAINS — The New York Power Authority (NYPA) and Siemens Energy, Inc. today announced a new collaboration to develop an […]

ABB launches analytics software and services that combines operational data with engineering and IT data to deliver actionable intelligence The ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite is a scalable advanced analytics platform with pre-built, easy-to-use applications and services. It collects, contextualizes and converts operational, engineering and information technology data into actionable insights that […]

Officials with the ITER project in France said work has started on the assembly of giant components needed for construction of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, a project designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful use. The ITER group, in a ceremony July 28 that was broadcast online (see […]

The two VECO-Drives have been running successfully for more than 6,000 operating hours, after being installed in February. The customer, Guangzhou China Resources Thermal Power Co., Ltd. is particularly impressed by the increased efficiency. Efficiency can be improved significantly compared to the replaced variable speed solution and reaches approximately 97 percent. YORK, Pa./GUANGZHOU/SHANGHAI. (July 23, 2020) […]

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility, operated by General Atomics for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is the largest magnetic fusion research facility in the U.S. The mission of the DIII-D research program is to establish the scientific basis for the optimization of the tokamak approach to fusion energy production. The DIII-D program is a […]

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have been dabbled with throughout the power industry for years. POWER featured a drone on its cover in April 2014, and has published many articles on drone technology since then. Yet, the technology has been used more as a novelty in the power sector up to this point. As […]

IDAS Turn-Key Panels Deliver Flexible Solutions to Meet Each Partner’s Unique Needs Tualatin, OR, July 21, 2020 – Obvius, a Leviton company and a leading provider of data acquisition solutions, announced today their partnership with OpenEGrid to provide a California Rule 21 compliant, site ready, integrated hardware solution. Solar Asset owners can now leverage the […]