Power
Monthly Issue | June 15, 2007
When tackling a problem, engineers bring both skepticism and optimism to the task. As the nation's electric power engineers look to fill America's looming capacity gap, they will need to…
June 1886 POWER reported on the art and science of water treatment and its effect on boiler performance in the cover story this month. "Dr. J.G. Rogers, an authority on…
Smart Grid, GridWise, IntelliGrid, AMI (advanced metering interface), Modern Grid, Smart Modern Grid, Grid Modernization. All of these terms float around today's discourse on the future shape of electricity transmission…
In a carbon-constrained world, CO2 capture and storage (CCS), although considered the most radical of the carbon abatement technologies (CATs), seems to be favored over combustion and steam cycle improvements…
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the nuclear track at the ELECTRIC POWER 2007 Conference & Exhibition (EP07) in Chicago last month was the attendance. For the most part, its…
Consumption of Powder River Basin coal continues to grow, from 28 million tons annually in the mid-1970s to what is now 400 million tons per year. Existing plants as far…
If little else is clear about the future of the U.S. power industry, this much is: Electricity rates are going up across the country, and will continue to. None of…
Concerns about global warming, rising fossil-fuel prices, and summer blackouts have put the ways that America generates and uses electricity on the front page. This year, for the first time,…
Albert Einstein once remarked that there is no difference between the past and the future in the four-dimensional space-time-world. That perspective might be useful for theoretical physicists, but the rest…
Clean Energy Systems Inc. (CES) has developed a zero-emissions power generation technology by integrating a component proven in the aerospace industry with conventional power plant equipment. Figure 1 is a…
At the heart of most boiler combustion control systems (and most coordinated boiler/turbine control systems as well) is throttle pressure correction, usually applied by the "master controller." Throttle pressure is…
Gencos selling into the wholesale market in Texas are no longer primarily responsible for the reliability of supply. In that deregulated market, responsibility for reliability has been largely transferred to…
Chauncey Starr, founder of EPRI—the Electric Power Research Institute—and its first CEO, passed away on April 17, 2007. The previous day, a celebration of his recent 95th birthday had been…
Historically, states have delegated responsibility for establishing and implementing their energy policy to a public utilities commission (PUC). During most of the 20th century, state PUCs operated with relatively…
SYSTEM RELIABILITY Ready for your NERC close-up? In the U.S., where electricity service is so reliable that it is taken for granted, one catastrophic failure can overshadow decades of flawless performance. Such…
Siemens, E.ON to test world's largest GTG Siemens Power Generation (SPG) last month loaded the world's largest, most powerful gas turbine-generator (GTG) onto a barge on the European inland waterway system…
James Thurber once said that it is "easier to ask some of the questions than to come up with all the answers." As a magazine editor, I get to ask…
