In This Issue
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InfographicsTHE BIG PICTURE [INFOGRAPHIC]: A Generation Freeze
Before the polar vortex earlier this year, several severe cold weather events had presented comparable power generation operational challenges. POWER ranks those events here in terms of loss of generation capacity. Common themes observed in both severe and lesser cold weather incidents involve constraints on natural gas fuel supplies to generating plants, and generating unit […]
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Legal & RegulatoryA U.S. Power Industry Regulatory Update
The U.S. power sector has seen a number of developments on the regulatory front in recent months. Here’s where major federal rules stand today. (For a more dynamic and graphic version of this article, see http://powermag.com/long-form-stories/bw-power/ .) GHG Rules New Power Plants. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in September 2013 revised a 2012 proposal to […]
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CoalTrianel Coal Power Plant Lünen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Germany’s energy transition— Energiewende —has made a lot of headlines. Whether you agree with the country’s energy policy or not, there is no denying that it has spurred the growth of renewables. Even
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O&MPrepare Your Coal Plant for Cold Weather Operations
Cold temperatures are nothing new, but extreme winter weather has been in the headlines more and more in recent years. Many of us had never heard the term “polar vortex” before last winter, but earlier
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O&MPrepare Your Gas Plant for Cold Weather Operations
A sustained Arctic blast composed of freezing rain, record snowfalls, and high winds hit 22 states, from Mexico to New England in early February 2011. The extreme weather severely affected the power generation
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O&MPrepare Your Nuclear Plant for Cold Weather Operations
During the Jan. 3–12, 2014, polar vortex that brought record-setting cold temperatures and severe winter weather to much of the U.S., nuclear plants not only survived, but thrived. According to the Nuclear
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Renewables
Prepare Your Renewable Plant for Cold Weather Operations
Last winter’s polar vortex was a reminder that, despite several years of mild winters, colder months can still pack a wallop. Decades of coal, gas, and nuclear plant operations have taught plant operators
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O&MQuickly Boost Your Combustion Turbine Response
Twice this year, PJM flirted with blackouts when brutal winter storms (dubbed a polar vortex) struck the Eastern U.S. in January. The cold weather set a new winter peak demand record of 141,500 MW on Jan. 7
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O&MNon-Carbon Reagent Injection for MATS Compliance
The upcoming implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) is putting pressure on coal-fired power plants to develop and implement compliance
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HydroA New Day for North American Hydropower?
Can hydropower get some love? Even fans of renewable energy can be forgiven for having forgotten about a resource that—up to now—has produced more electricity than wind, solar, biomass, and all other
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GasConstruction of Russia-China Pipeline Kicks Off
Gazprom on Sept. 1 made the first weld of a 4,000-km natural gas pipeline that will run from gas production centers in Russia’s Yakutia and Irkutsk gas production fields to Russia’s Far Eastern regions
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Business
A Look Back at Electricity Rates
A recent encounter with a newspaper from 1901 got me thinking about the price of electricity over time and how it compares with price changes for other goods and services. Price Changes Over a Century The
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T&DA New Record for the Longest Transmission Link
A 7,100-MW±600-kV high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) line that runs 2,375 kilometers (km) from new hydropower plants on the Madeira River in the Amazon Basin to major load centers in southeastern Brazil
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Legal & Regulatory
Unbundled Renewable Energy Credits and the Benefits of Standardization
Unbundled Renewable Energy Credits and the Benefits of Standardization Unbundled renewable energy credits and certificates (RECs) separate the renewable, or green, component of energy from the actual
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CoalPoland Mulls Energy Future
Resource-rich Poland’s push to prioritize coal as its main energy source and to cultivate a nuclear power program to boost energy security at the expense of climate objectives has provoked its portrayal
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Commentary
Collaborating to Build a Cleaner Energy Infrastructure
Kelly Speakes-Backman Every day there is increasing evidence that we need to accelerate our nation’s transition to a cleaner energy infrastructure. The American Climate Prospectus released by the Risky
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Renewables
First Solar Reports Thin-Film PV Cell Breakthrough
Arizona-based solar photovoltaic (PV) system provider First Solar in August said it had achieved a cadmium-telluride (CdTe) PV research cell conversion efficiency of 21%—a world record. The thin-film PV
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CoalCamden Power Station, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa
Eskom, South Africa’s largest utility, was established in 1923 as the Electricity Supply Commission and was converted into a public company, wholly owned by the government, in July 2002. Eskom produces about
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GasMHI Develops High-Efficiency 2-MW Gas Engine
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in August revealed that it had developed a 2-MW 16-cylinder high-speed gas engine that potentially offers a power generation efficiency (lower heating value) of more than
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CoalHitachinaka Thermal Power Station Unit 2, Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan
Bad weather, unforeseen setbacks, and even natural disasters are far from unheard of during power plant construction. But there may be no plant that experienced the sort of construction hardships that Tokyo
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CoalMundra Thermal Power Plant, Mundra, Gujarat, India
In the October 2013 issue of POWER, Tata Power’s 4-GW Mundra ultra-mega power plant was recognized with a Top Plant award in the coal category. This year POWER recognizes another behemoth in the region—and
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O&MProper Lubrication Practices Improve Plant Operations
Although industrial lubricants typically account for only 1% of plant operational costs (Figure 1), the lack of proper lubrication products, techniques, or applications can have a much more severe effect on
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CoalSesa Sterlite Captive Power Plant, Jharsuguda, Odisha, India
This is a tough time to be running a business as power-intensive as aluminum smelting in India. The economic boom that has lifted many of the nation’s 1.2 billion citizens out of persistent poverty has