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Top Plant: Alliant Energy’s Dubuque Generating Station is a fine example of why small doesn’t mean insignificant in the power generation industry. This winner of the EUCG Best Performer award in the small plant category shows that its operating excellence towers over that of many larger and much newer coal-fired power plants.

The United States is used to transporting fuels to electric generation centers that are close to where the power supply is needed. We see trains carry coal by the carload from resource-rich areas to generation centers across the country. Natural gas is distributed through pipelines. Even uranium is transported to supply our nuclear stations. However, […]

Republican presidential candidate John McCain made reference to the word “fight” 25 times during his September 4 nomination acceptance speech. While watching McCain’s histrionics, my mind wandered back to another historic fight—the “Rumble in the Jungle.” Muhammad Ali, arguably the best boxer who ever stepped into the squared circle, was pitted against then-World Champion George […]

In the wake of a recent federal case, large power plants are off the hook for now as far as complying with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2004 rule intended to protect fish and other aquatic organisms by controlling cooling water intake practices.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Pranab Mukherjee, her Indian counterpart, signed a pact Friday that allows U.S. equipment and service providers to support India’s plans to increase the country’s nuclear capacity.     The accord seals the “123 Agreement,” an historic deal that lifts a 34-year-old ban on U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear trade. After three […]

After an extensive public process, the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) last week approved construction of a 500-kV transmission line project running through the northern part of that state.   TrAILCo’s $850 million project—named the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line (TrAIL)—calls for construction of a new 500-kV line extending from southwestern Pennsylvania through West Virginia and into […]

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last week awarded military-industrial giant Lockheed Martin a cooperative agreement contract worth $1.2 million to demonstrate innovative generation technologies that use the ocean’s thermal gradient.    Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) uses temperature differences of 36 degrees F or more between warm surface water and cold deep seawater to […]

PPL Corp. on Friday submitted an application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to build and operate a new nuclear plant—the 17th received by the agency so far.   The company has proposed in its combined construction and operating license (COL) application to build the Bell Bend nuclear plant close to […]

Representatives from both presidential campaigns engaged in a spirited debate about their candidates’ approaches to solving the nation’s energy problems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Oct. 6. Among the notable distinctions were that John McCain favors leaving energy decisions up to the states while Barack Obama calls for significant regulations and investment […]

What does human metabolism have in common with coal combustion? Quite a bit, it turns out, say researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) who are studying chemical looping combustion (CLC) involving coal gasification, an emerging technology for clean energy production from fossil and renewable fuels.