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May 1885 POWER reported on the latest Twist Automatic Engine (Figure 1) in its cover story for the May 1885 issue. The editor explained that “each end of the cylinder has one main valve, for admission and exhaust, and one cut-off valve; all being plugs with partial rotary movement; and the cut-off valves being within […]

  As the possibility of national climate change legislation increases on Capitol Hill and captures the attention of the electric power community, I am concerned that regulators, legislators, and utility executives will forget the urgency of modernizing the U.S. electricity delivery infrastructure. On the surface, the issues of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and upgrading and […]

Sylvester Stallone, as Rocky Balboa, staged another magical comeback earlier this year — in the ring and at the box office. Just when you think Rocky is down and out for good, the sixth release of the Rocky franchise just may be the best of the lot. “Down but not out” is also an apt […]

It’s déjà synfuels all over again. With crude oil prices seemingly interminably pegged at over $60 a barrel, the old, beguiling notion of turning coal into liquid fuel — a task accomplished by the Nazis in the 1940s and the South Africans in the 1970s and 1980s — is once again front-page political news in […]

Money is always spent with the best intentions. We look for the best deal, often identifying it by the lowest price. Sometimes, our choice works out and we save money and get a great product. When it doesn’t work out, however, we find ourselves spending more and more money to repair or replace our “great […]

During 2005, about 150 million tons of coal were transported to power plants by hopper barges plying U.S. inland waterways. With coal-fired plants expected to continue producing 50% of America’s electricity, coal barge traffic is not likely to fall off. In fact, it may increase, for two reasons. One is cost. Shipping coal by barge […]

The Fayette Power Project (FPP, aka the Sam K. Seymour Power Station) is a three-unit, coal-fired generating plant sited near La Grange, Texas (Figure 1). Units 1 and 2, each with a nominal rating of 600 MW, are co-owned by the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) and Austin Energy (AE). LCRA is a conservation and […]

Reducing NOx emissions from large utility coal-fired boilers has been a primary focus of the U.S. power generation industry since passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act and subsequent legislation. By the early 1990s, nearly all such boilers had installed some form of low-NOx burner (LNB) technology and/or overfire air (OFA) — the least expensive […]

Ninety years ago America was at war, and producers of coal (principally anthracite) were struggling to meet demand. It’s hard now to conceive of coal as the universal fuel, but there was a time when it was used in the U.S. to heat homes, schools, and libraries as well as to make steel and manufacture […]

Ten years ago, any self-respecting U.S. utility executive might have been drawn and quartered for publicly promoting a nuclear power revival. How times have changed. Today, more than half of America’s nuclear plants have outsourced their operations to specialty firms, and the prospect of a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. (see Cover Story) is brighter […]