Latest
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News
FPL Will Build World’s Largest Battery Storage System
Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) has been building new solar farms and bringing gigawatts of new natural gas-fired generation capacity online in recent years. Now the utility has announced what it calls the world’s largest solar-powered battery storage system. FPL on March 28 said the Manatee Energy Storage Center, a 409-MW/900-MWh battery storage facility, […]
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News
N.C. Officials Order Duke Energy to Excavate Coal Ash Ponds
North Carolina officials have ordered Duke Energy to excavate all its coal ash storage ponds in the state, saying the utility’s current plan for its coal ash sites does not sufficiently protect groundwater. The directive issued April 1 comes after regulators in other states, including Virginia, issued similar rulings regarding coal ash disposal in those […]
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News
New Gas-Fired Plants Come Online in Michigan
Upper Michigan Energy Resources Corp. (UMERC) placed two new natural gas-fired generating stations into commercial operation on March 31, part of the company’s plan to reshape its generation fleet as it seeks to “balance reliability and customer cost with environmental stewardship.” UMERC, a subsidiary of WEC Energy Group, also retired the coal-fired 430-MW Presque Isle […]
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News
Inside NET Power: Gas Power Goes Supercritical
A project to demonstrate a novel power cycle that promises to produce low-cost, reliable, and flexible power from natural gas—while generating no atmospheric emissions, and fully capturing carbon dioxide—is inching closer to commissioning. Its developers are now actively assessing siting for the first commercial-scale 300-MW NET Power facility. NET Power’s 50 MWth Demonstration Plant in La […]
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Technology
What Are Supercritical CO2 Power Cycles?
While conventional power plant cycles produce power from turbines using water or steam as the working fluid, supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) cycles use CO2 that is in a supercritical state—at a temperature and pressure above its critical point where liquid and gas phases are not distinguishable. CO2 has a relatively low critical pressure of 7.4 megapascal […]
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O&M
Managing Thermal Quench Damage at Power Plants
Attemperation equipment is necessary to control steam temperatures at many power plants. However, when the equipment functions improperly or the design is flawed, thermal quenching/shock can damage piping
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News
Plenty of Natural Gas to Go Around—It Just Needs a Market
Demand growth for natural gas for power generation may have slowed in the U.S., as renewable resources continue to take market share. With U.S. production continuing to hit record highs, and new gas-fired
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Hydro
Optimizing Kaplan Turbine Efficiency with Minimal Cost, Effort, and Time
When the blades of individual Kaplan turbines are not continuously adjusted to achieve peak efficiency, the result is non-optimal performance and unnecessarily high mortality of downstream migrating fish
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T&D
Is a Faster-Than-Real-Time Energy Management System Within Reach?
Creating a faster-than-real-time Energy Management System (EMS) is a huge challenge for the power industry. In order to be considered faster-than-real-time, the EMS must be capable of executing within a