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News
POWER Digest [August 2021]
Bangladesh Scraps 8 GW of Coal-Fired Projects. Bangladesh’s government on June 26 approved the Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources Ministry’s proposal to scrap 10 coal-fired power plants, given their lack
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Nuclear
Fuel Loading Only Major Milestone Left for Vogtle Unit 3 Nuclear Project
Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Company, reported during the company’s earnings call on July 29 that hot functional testing (HFT) had been completed on Vogtle Unit 3, and that the “next and final major milestone” is fuel load. “We project fuel load to occur sometime near year-end 2021 or early in 2022,” he said. The […]
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Solar
Leveling the Market Playing Field for Hybrid Power Plants
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is an independent agency that, among other things, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity. Its ultimate mission is to “Assist consumers in obtaining economically efficient, safe, reliable, and secure energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means, and collaborative efforts.” In the past, FERC has […]
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Nuclear
Exelon Set to Decommission Illinois Nuclear Plants
Exelon Generation has filed plans to decommission its Dresden and Byron nuclear power plants in Illinois, citing a lack of action from state lawmakers on clean energy legislation that would help save the facilities. The nation’s largest operator of nuclear power plants on July 28 said it has submitted its plans to the Nuclear Regulatory […]
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Cybersecurity
Biden Signs National Security Memo Addressing Industrial Control System Cybersecurity
The Biden administration is moving to add more safeguards to the nation’s critical infrastructure by establishing a new voluntary public-private collaboration that will focus wholly on industrial control systems (ICS) cybersecurity. The administration formally launched the “Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity Initiative” in the “National Security Memorandum on Improving Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure Control Systems” signed by […]
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Connected Plant
Data Breaches Cost More Than $4 Million Per Incident, Power Industry at High Risk
IBM Security reported on July 28 that the average cost of recent data breaches was $4.24 million per incident, the highest cost ever recorded by the company in 17 years of tracking the metric. Notably, data breaches in the U.S. were by far the costliest, exceeding $9 million per incident on average. The findings were […]
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Coal
EPA Will Strengthen Limits on Wastewater Pollution from Coal-Fired Plants
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to establish more stringent standards on water pollution from coal-fired power plants. The EPA on July 26 announced it would reinstate Obama-era regulations that were rolled back by the Trump administration. An EPA official on Monday said the new rule would impact about 100 coal-fired plants. The agency […]
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News
G20 Environment Ministers: No Consensus on Phasing Out Coal
The U.S., UK and other countries want world governments to commit to a phaseout of the use and financing of coal-fired power generation, but officials who met at the G20 Environment Ministers Meeting summit in Naples, Italy, this past week ended their talks without an agreement on the future of the fuel. The topic will […]
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Management
Five Steps to Streamlined Asset Management and a Sustainable Network
How do utility asset managers deal with risks and failures of assets in the long-term? How much should they be budgeting for maintenance, asset renewal, and investments? The answers are not always obvious for asset managers that are faced with increasingly severe weather and the need for strengthened electrical grids. Another layer of unpredictability is […]
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News
FirstEnergy Federally Charged in Ohio Nuclear Bailout Scheme
Facing a federal charge for honest services wire fraud in a corruption case related to the billion-dollar nuclear plant bailout in Ohio, FirstEnergy Corp. has agreed to abide by the terms of a three-year deferred prosecution settlement to get the charge dismissed. In court filings on July 22, the Akron, Ohio-based public utility holding company […]