In This Issue
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CoalFrance’s Nuclear Storm: Many Power Plants Down Due to Quality Concerns
[Note: This article first appeared online on November 1.] The discovery of widespread carbon segregation problems in critical nuclear plant components has crippled the French power industry—20 of the country’s 58 reactors are currently offline and under heavy scrutiny. France’s nuclear safety chairman said more anomalies “will likely be found,” as the extent of the contagion […]
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SolarTOP PLANT: Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, Tonopah, Nevada
Owner/operator: SolarReserve Three-and-a-half hours north of Las Vegas, in a rocky, desolate stretch of Nevada desert, an innovative solar-storage plant has nearly completed a year of commercial operations. It also may have delivered proof of round-the-clock dispatchable solar energy. The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a concentrating solar power (CSP) plant built by Santa Monica, […]
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RenewablesTOP PLANT: Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge, Benton County, Indiana
Owner/operator: Pattern Energy Just as Seattle’s Amazon.com jumpstarted the online shopping trend, it’s now part of another trend that has major corporations owning or contracting for sizable grid-connected renewable power facilities. A new wind farm in rural Indiana is part of that story. Cloud computing is big business, and it’s growing as fast as cumulous […]
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RenewablesTOP PLANT: Gibe III Hydroelectric Project, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region, Ethiopia
Owner/operator: Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. Building the 1,870-MW Gibe III hydroelectric project required unprecedented solutions that took into account the remoteness of the site, the narrow gorge where the dam is located, the height of the dam, and challenges in sourcing reliable materials. Split almost diagonally by the East African Rift System, Ethiopia is a […]
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RenewablesTOP PLANT: Palm Beach Renewable Energy Facility 2, West Palm Beach, Florida
Owner/operator: Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County/Babcock & Wilcox Co. Although waste-to-energy (WTE) technology is well proven, the relatively low cost of landfilling garbage in the U.S. has foiled new power plant construction for many years. However, a facility in Florida—the first greenfield WTE project the U.S. has seen in 20 years—shows it’s still […]
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RenewablesTOP PLANT: Tosunlar 1 Akca Plant, Saraykoy, Denizli, Turkey
Owner/operator: Akca Enerji Geothermal energy has long been handicapped by its need for high-temperature resources to generate economic power, but innovations in binary Organic Rankine Cycle systems are making it possible to exploit low-temperature sites. An innovative plant in Turkey using Italian technology has taken things a step further with a unique two-pressure, multistage, single-disk […]
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Commentary
Regulators’ Roles Increase in Scope and Complexity
Public utility commissioners matter. A lot. Now more than ever, these state regulators are charged with looking out for the best interests of utility customers in states that have regulated electric and other utilities. As we’ve seen from countless recent news stories, public utility commissions (PUCs) play a significant role in determining what power system […]
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RenewablesTOP PLANT: Yeongheung Ocean Hydro Power Plants, Yeongheung Island, South Korea
Owner/operator: Korea South East Power Co., Ltd. Few people would view a large coal plant as a place to generate renewable energy. But a Korean utility took a chance on an innovative approach, harnessing the latent energy of the plant’s cooling effluent to drive a trio of hydroelectric plants, and in so doing, created a […]
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HydroSichuan Limits Small and Medium Hydropower Construction
China’s Sichuan provincial government has moved to restrict construction of small and medium hydropower projects between 2016 and 2020 in an effort to improve grid planning and efficiency. Policy proposals posted on the Sichuan government’s website in October seek to prohibit small-scale hydropower projects and limit medium-sized plants over the next five years. Reuters reported […]
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O&M“Who Moved My Btus?” The Pitfalls of Extended Coal Storage
Many coal power stations have recently been operating at historically low capacity factors or have even undergone extended economic shutdowns. This can result in coal stockpiles that are exposed to the elements for much longer times than anticipated, resulting in a loss of usable coal energy by several mechanisms. This article explores the severity of […]
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CoalUNESCO Recommends Relocation of Coal Plant in Bangladesh
In a rare intervention, the United Nations’ (UN’s) heritage conservation arm is urging Bangladesh to relocate a proposed 1,320-MW coal-fired power plant because it poses a serious threat to one of the world’s largest mangrove forests. Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Co. Ltd. (BIFPCL)—a joint venture of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and India’s largest power […]
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Plant DesignAdvanced Furnace Draft Pressure Control Using Electraulic Damper Drives
Pneumatic furnace damper drives may be more common, but electro-hydraulic actuators provide several advantages to the more traditional control scheme. One fossil-fired plant in Taiwan achieved more consistent and accurate furnace draft pressure control by retrofitting its dampers with Electraulic actuators, optimizing combustion and increasing boiler availability in the process. Fossil fuel–fired power plants worldwide […]
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RenewablesJordan Gets 52.5-MW Solar PV Plant
A 52.5-MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant commissioned this October in Jordan will generate about 1% of the Middle Eastern nation’s power (Figure 5). 5. Solar carpet. The 52.5-MW Shams Ma’an Solar Power Plant in Jordan was commissioned this October. Courtesy: Business Wire The plant uses more than 600,000 Series 4 thin-film modules manufactured by Arizona-headquartered […]
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RenewablesA Bigger Splash: The State of Ocean Energy
The ocean power sector is still in its early stages of development, shackled by high development and operational costs. Trends emerging over the past two years hint at which technologies could dominate the sector’s future. Despite decades of research and development that have yielded several innovative ways of using oceans to fuel power generation, the […]
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WindSouth Australian Blackout Renews Debate on Renewables’ Role in Reliability
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 […]
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CoalOntario Power Generation: A Clash of Politics and Power Planning
Ontario—Canada’s most populous province and its major economic engine—has an electric power supply system so driven by provincial politics that it has pushed the province’s utility generating arm, Ontario Power Generation, into what appear to be incoherent resource policies. Late last September, in a stunning announcement, the Canadian province of Ontario’s Energy Ministry said it […]
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RenewablesCuba Gives Green Light to PV Technology
Cuba is in the midst of a renewable revolution to transform, update, and adapt its fossil fuel–dependent power mix to its current energy needs. Because Cuba has a relatively high solar potential (~ 5 kWh/m2/day), and it is feasible to adapt solar photovoltaic (PV) technology to rural areas, islands, and isolated communities, commercial interest in […]
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Commentary
Utility Regulation, Old and New
God forbid that you have a job that requires you to read the orders issued by public utility commissions (PUCs). As a regulator, I not only have to read them—I have to write them. And even I marvel at the arcane, trial-like proceedings of PUCs and the orders that emerge from them, which are the […]
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Business
POWER Digest
Refurbishment of OPG’s Darlington Units Begins. Work to refurbish Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG’s) 3.5-GW Darlington Nuclear Generating Station kicked off on October 15. The refurbishment of the four Darlington reactors, which have provided about 20% of Ontario’s power since they went into service in the early 1990s, will span 10 years. The project is estimated […]
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RenewablesTanzanian Village Gets Mini-Grid with Unique Business Model
French multinational power company ENGIE on October 20 inaugurated a mini-network comprising 16 kW of solar photovoltaic panels, a 45-kWh lithium-ion battery bank, and a back-up genset to supply power to Ketumbeine, a village in northern Tanzania with about 800 residents. The PowerCorner project (Figure 6) was launched in early 2015. ENGIE said the project […]
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Legal & RegulatoryUtilities Grapple with Storage Integration
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 […]
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NuclearChashma 3, Pakistan’s Fourth Reactor, Is Connected to the Grid
China’s third nuclear reactor built for the export market, Chashma Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3, was connected to Pakistan’s grid in mid-October. Chashma 3 is one of two Chinese-designed CNP-300 pressurized-water reactors being built on the site in Punjab Province. Unit 3 is expected to enter commercial operation at the end of 2016 and Unit […]
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O&MBoiler Cleaning with Shock Pulse Generators
Increasing plant efficiency and reducing maintenance costs is important for economic power plant operation. One part of the task involves keeping the boiler heating surfaces as clean as possible, which increases heat transfer, reduces maintenance, and avoids unplanned standstills of the plant. Shock pulse generators (SPGs) are an innovative and efficient way to manage boiler […]
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Legal & Regulatory
The Raging Battle Over Rate Design
It’s often said that technology runs well ahead of the law. Not so long ago, the process of setting electric utility rates was only slightly more dramatic than watching paint dry. This was by design. There was generally only one goal—keeping the lights on—and everything else was structured to support it. The utility generated the […]
