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  • Companies Announce New Residential VPP for California

    A distributed energy power plant, designed to help bring more reliability to California’s power grid, is being developed by a company whose investors include Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The project when fully developed would be the world’s largest residential virtual power plant (VPP). Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), a group that builds, owns, operates, […]

  • Green Power Enables Green Hydrogen and Zero-Emissions Mobility

    Wuppertal, in the German state of Nordrhein Westfahlen, is the home to the Schwebebahn. This suspended railway (Figure 1) is unique in Germany and passengers use the transportation system for 25 million journeys per year. Today, 120 years after Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn opened, the city is still innovating. Green hydrogen produced from power generated by incineration […]

  • Continued Toll on Coal; More Companies File Bankruptcy

    The struggling U.S. coal industry, decimated by falling demand for the fuel from the power generation sector, and hit hard by low prices during the coronavirus pandemic, saw two more mining companies declare bankruptcy this week. White Stallion Energy, which operates in Indiana and Illinois, and Lighthouse Resources, a coal company with mines in Wyoming […]

  • How to Monitor Assets Remotely Today

    As long as products have had ethernet ports, people have been asking for remote access to them. They believed they could just plug the devices into the internet, and it would all work. At first, there wasn’t necessarily a clear path to making this dream a reality without assistance from the user’s IT department. IT […]

  • Engineering Technicians and Technologists Are an Important Industry Pillar

    According to Cheryl Farrow, CEO of the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists (OACETT), there are three basic pillars that make up the engineering field. They are licensed engineers, technicians and technologists, and skilled trades. “We can’t be successful without all three of these pillars working together effectively,” Farrow said as a guest […]

  • RWE’s 300-MW ‘Grid Stability’ Gas Plant Will Debut GE LM2500XPRESS Technology

    RWE Generation will install 11 units of GE Gas Power’s freshly launched LM2500XPRESS power plant technology to provide a critical gas-power reserve in Germany’s reliability-challenged southern region.  The project will debut GE’s LM2500XPRESS, a “plug-and-play” power plant model it launched in January 2020 that features pre-packaged LM2500 aeroderivative gas turbines. Delivered in a simplified set […]

  • NAESB’s First Move to Set Energy Digitalization Standards Heavily Focused on Blockchain, Cybersecurity

    The North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB), a wholesale and retail natural gas and power industry forum comprising 300 corporate members, will initially focus its standards development to support cybersecurity and blockchain out of 11 digital technologies it identified that are quickly transforming the energy space.  The board’s April 2019–formed Digital Committee, which comprises 16 […]

  • Bipartisan Bill to Preserve Existing Nuclear Plants Clears Senate Committee

    The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) has approved the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020 (ANIA), just two weeks after it was introduced. Among the bill’s major provisions are that it will seek to  strengthen the nuclear fuel supply chain, help incentivize commercial deployment of new reactor designs, and create a credit […]

  • FERC Regains Full Five Members as Regulatory Fights Loom

    The U.S. Senate on Nov. 30 confirmed Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) nominees Allison Clements and Mark Christie, filling out all five seats at the helm of the federal energy regulator with a bipartisan panel for the first time in nearly two years.  Clements, a Democrat, replaces former Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur for a term that […]

  • Designing for Safety: A New Approach to Belt Conveyors

    Conveyors are among the most dynamic and potentially dangerous areas of equipment at a coal power plant. Even though their safety and performance are critical to the operation’s success, the impact of their contribution to overall efficiency is often unrecognized by management and workers alike. Operational basics of belt conveyor systems are too often a […]