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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Boiler feedwater valves operate under severe service conditions and are subject to premature failure from seat leakage, cavitation, particulates, and frequent cycling. However, once the type and root cause of

Reality capture uses laser scanning hardware to record the as-built conditions of any environment in a series of scans. These scans, once stitched together, create a holistic picture of structures, equipment

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

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

The right level instrumentation is key to keeping boilers on an even keel. Guided-wave radar offers a critical combination of capabilities. If asked to make a short list of factors able to improve heat rate