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Fuel flexibility isn’t free. Whether you’re equipping a new power plant to burn more than one type of coal or retrofitting an existing plant to handle coal blends, you’ll have to spend time and money to ensure that all three functions performed by its coal-handling system—unloading, stockout, and reclaim—are up to the task. The first half of this article lays out the available options for configuring each subsystem to support blending. The second half describes, in words and pictures, how 12 power plants—both new and old—address the issue.

Slagging and fouling of furnaces and boilers’ convective pass top the list of costly coal plant O&M problems. Although sootblowing is a tried and true solution, running sootblowers too often can erode boiler tubes. Lehigh University’s Energy Research Center has developed an "expert" sootblowing system that has outperformed experienced operators’ "seat of their pants" sootblowing procedures on two head-to-head field tests.

For some gencos, the dearth of operating experience for integrated gasification combined-cycle plants adds too much uncertainty to the risk/reward equation for new-capacity technology options. For others, the possibility of being able to comply with air pollution limits as far out as 2018, as well as to meet all-but-certain CO₂ caps, makes IGCC well worth investing in—now.

Concerns about global climate change have prompted interest in reducing or eliminating the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of fossil fuel-fired power plants. Here’s a guide to the technology and economics of three CO₂ capture methods: postcombustion separation of CO₂ from flue gas (applicable to existing plants), and oxygen-fired combustion and precombustion capture (suitable for new coal-fired capacity, including IGCC plants).

In 2005, Xcel Energy fully implemented its unique Utility Innovations initiative to encourage its IT vendors to work together. One pilot project completed under the UI umbrella confirmed that tighter integration of predictive and analytical systems and data can optimize preventive maintenance intervals, reducing costs and downtime while increasing profits and productivity.

Large T&D-sized transformers age as quickly as generating assets do. But preventing transformers from failing is difficult because they have no moving parts and are sealed up. Tracking the concentrations of certain gases—the more, the better—that are dissolved in a unit’s insulating oil is a proven way of detecting damage before it causes a costly problem.

The first megawatt-class sodium sulfur (NaS) battery placed in service in North America was installed this June in Charleston, W.Va. The 1.2-MW system—comprising the battery and a bidirectional inverter—can be discharged during the day to provide 7.2 MWh of on-demand power for shaving peak loads and be recharged at night. It’s no longer true that electricity can’t be stored, except in small quantities.

In his keynote speech this May to the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, held in Iceland and hosted by the Earth Institute of Columbia University, Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson—the president of Iceland—challenged government and business leaders to take measurable steps now to build a prosperous and sustainable future through smart science and public policy. Grimsson’s call […]

—Dr. Robert Peltier, PE Editor-in-Chief During every summer hot enough to break peak demand records, the rhetoric heats up as well, with calls to rid the U.S. bulk-power system of bottlenecks. As the eternal optimist, I see large transmission projects showing signs of life and grid reliability improving. But not everyone is happy about that. […]

Demand records fall nationwide;
GE’s ABWR to be STP’s edge; Entergy buys Palisades plant; Dithering over desert disposal; Tourist trash-to-energy plant;
Brooklyn says "Yo!" to microturbines; POWER digest