Latest
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Coal
Norwegian CCS Boss: CCS is not BS
Sitting on a panel during the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York City on April 24, Michael Bloomberg proclaimed that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is “total bullshit.” That statement was not received well by Trude Sundset, CEO of Gassnova, Norway’s state enterprise for the development of CCS. “There’s a whole new world […]
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Coal
EPA Guidance on State Coal Ash Permit Programs Is Coming, Pruitt Says
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it is working on guidance to give states the flexibility in implementing programs for the management of coal combustion residuals (CCR) disposal. In an April 28 letter to state governors, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt described the agency’s steps to implement a “new authority” for authorizing state CCR management […]
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Nuclear
Vogtle, V.C. Summer Project Owners Buy More Time to Mull Fate of Nuclear Units
The owners of the Vogtle and V.C. Summer nuclear expansions separately secured a few more weeks to allow work to continue onsite at each project while they decide how to proceed with the half-built AP1000 reactors after Westinghouse’s financial debacle. In Georgia, owners of the project to expand Plant Vogtle extended an interim assessment agreement […]
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O&M
Newly Designed Deluge Valve Improves Functionality
Stanwell Power Station, a 1,460-MW coal-fired power plant located in Queensland, Australia, faced a dilemma. The reliability of its fire protection system was questionable. Many of the plant’s multiple jet
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Distributed Energy
Whatever Happened to Fuel Cells?
Hydrogen-powered fuel cells were supposed to be the “Next Big Thing” a decade ago, but the hype ran well ahead of the market and technology. Yet some quiet advances and steady work have the sector on the
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Legal & Regulatory
Should Investor-Owned Utilities Be Worried About Community Choice Aggregation?
Community choice aggregation (CCA) is only allowed in seven states currently, but recent developments in California have investor-owned utilities there worried. They fear losing up to 80% of their retail load
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Connected Plant
Malware in Modern ICS: Understanding Impact While Avoiding Hype
Understanding the threat posed to industrial control systems (ICSs) by malware is difficult. It requires knowledge of proper ICS functionality in order to identify illegitimate software. One industrial
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Legal & Regulatory
New York’s Ambitious Transitions: Who Wins? Who Loses? Who Knows?
New York’s electricity system and markets face a blizzard of changes, driven by policy, politics, and economic forces. The New York Independent System Operator and the New York State Energy Research and
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O&M
3-D Printing: The Future of Manufacturing and Maintenance
Power plants are complex systems with countless moving parts, and in turn, countless opportunities for things to go wrong. With the advent of 3-D printing technology, repairing or replacing those moving parts