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Combined cycle plants have the advantages of being extremely efficient and can be built in two phases when power needs peak unexpectedly. Ulsan 4 was built in response to the country’s 2011 power crisis for both reasons. The first task was installation of the combustion turbines in time to meet the 2013 summer peak demand. […]

Like some of those tests your doctor is always after you to get, boiler chemical cleaning is something that most of us would rather not think about but that we all agree is necessary. Adding to our general discomfort with the process are new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, which make the disposal of chemical cleaning […]

Though “social costs” may be a new term of art in the power industry, it is about to become a critical one. Here’s what you need to understand about the concept in general and how it applies to the recently finalized cooling water intake rule.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) recently released rule regarding […]

Once merely a staple of backup and distributed generation, reciprocating engines are now challenging other resources for utility-scale generation—in addition to carving out some new niches. Grant County is a rural, sparsely populated county in southwestern Kansas. It doesn’t have a lot of people—its population in the 2010 U.S. Census was just 7,829—but what it […]

While several methods exist for sizing collector pipes on steam lines, the results obtained from the various approaches can be quite different. This article will show how design parameters can be used to calculate the dimensions much more accurately. In the steam lines of thermal and nuclear power plants, condensed steam is usually discharged from […]

Geothermal generation is clean, renewable, and cost-effective over the long term, and the U.S. has vast untapped geothermal resources. So why is it still operating on the sidelines?   For the U.S. geothermal energy industry, 2013 ended on a positive note. Cyrq Energy’s Dale Burgett geothermal plant, a 4-MW unit in southwest New Mexico, began […]

To ensure that its nuclear plants do not meet the same fate as those damaged and destroyed by the March 2011 events at the Fukushima Daiichi plant—should they be hit by similarly severe natural disasters—Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is using multiple new approaches to enhance safety. First Installation of New Spent Fuel Pool Instrumentation Spent […]

Skilled maintenance and service teams inspect critical infrastructure, perform preventive maintenance, and quickly respond to issues to keep service levels high. It is critical that such teams work with as-built drawings that reflect original plans along with the cumulative changes. Armed with the current drawings, service teams can avoid surprises. The challenge is that drawings […]

The El Arrayán Wind facility—located about 250 miles north of Santiago on the Chilean coast—was officially opened on Aug. 26 during a ceremony that included Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet. “El Arrayán is the biggest wind farm in Chile and we are pleased at what we can achieve when we use the natural resources the earth […]

Calpine Corp. has its hands in two deals with large power companies—selling a plant to Duke Energy in Florida while buying a plant from Exelon Corp. in Massachusetts. On Aug. 25, Calpine announced that it has agreed to buy Exelon’s 809-MW Fore River Generating Station, which is located about 12 miles southeast of Boston, for […]