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  • FPL Developing More Solar, Set to Bring Big Gas Plant Online

    Florida Power & Light (FPL) on March 4 announced plans to build four new solar power plants this year, with each expected to come online in early 2020. The company has rapidly expanded its solar power portfolio in recent years; the four new plants will join 18 others already operating in the state. FPL also […]

  • The Line Blurs Between Small Cogen Plants and Large Combined Cycles

    When U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA), he unintentionally ignited the worldwide deregulation of electricity markets, which in turn began a worldwide technology race between two distinct types of power plants: the newly created, industrial-scale plant that PURPA dubbed “cogeneration” and the traditional, utility-scale power […]

  • ERCOT Warns of Intensified Summer Supply Crunch (UPDATED)

    Grappling with a historically low planning reserve margin of 7.4%, owing to a mass of coal plant closures, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is forecasting record electric use this summer and warns it could issue energy alerts at “various times.”  ERCOT said its March 5–released final Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy (SARA) for […]

  • POWER Notebook: Alabama Power Says Closing Coal Plant Will Cost $740 Million

    Several developments worldwide impacted the power generation landscape in the past week, including more news about the closure of a coal-fired power plant in Alabama, the restart of a geothermal facility in Hawaii, and construction of a biomass-fueled power plant in Japan. In addition, a company said it plans a $150 million investment in three […]

  • Carbon Capture Proposed to Save New Mexico Coal Plant

    The New York-based hedge fund aiming to take over New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station (SJGS), targeted for closure by state lawmakers, wants to refit the 46-year-old, coal-fired plant to use carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. Acme Equities LLC said last week that retrofitting the 847-MW plant with CCS technology would cut carbon emissions […]

  • Power Supplies in Pacific Northwest Tighten as Deep Freeze Grips Region

    Energy supplies are tight in the Pacific Northwest, a region that has been stricken with unseasonably frigid weather and is bracing for deep freezes as a mass of Arctic air descends on the region.    The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a federal power marketer that sells wholesale power from 31 federal dams and one nuclear […]

  • THE BIG PICTURE: Japan’s Nuclear Comeback

    After the Great Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami, and ensuing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011, Japan issued stringent safety regulations and reviews that affected its entire 50-reactor fleet. It meant that as each Japanese nuclear reactor entered its scheduled maintenance and refueling outage, it could not returned to operation until restart […]

  • High-Purity Boiler Water pH Measurement

    Water quality monitoring and control are two of the most critical operations that power plants employ to protect assets, such as boilers and steam turbines, from corrosion by assuring the correct addition of

  • Solving Renewable Transmission Constraints with Water Infrastructure

    One of the largest hurdles to delivering substantial amounts of renewable energy is transmission constraints. Los Angeles’ current in-basin transmission infrastructure is based largely on delivering power

  • Equipment Showcase: Diesel and Gas Generators

    The market for mobile and smaller-scale power generation continues to grow. Commercial and industrial sites are using generators to produce their own power, often to ensure a constant flow of electricity in