Features

With ever-increasing demands for fast ramping and flexibility, natural gas–fired plants are grabbing a bigger share of the generation pie. But uncertainty about future prices and concerns about overreliance on a single fuel are dampening enthusiasm during what may be the most exciting time for gas ever. Natural gas is hot—but will generators and the market get burned?

With the country awash in natural gas and new construction dominated by gas-fired plants, one would think that integrating these plants into the grid would be simple. Like politics, integration problems appear to be local.

It’s easy to see why technologists fall in love with high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). These nuclear machines are remarkable inventions, at least on paper. But few have actually seen the real world for any length of time, and their real-world experience has been mixed.

Natural gas prices and low wholesale electricity prices are creating headwinds for large-scale renewable projects such as wind.

Transformer fires are fearsome events, perhaps the most dangerous common threats to human life—both onsite and beyond the boundaries of a power plant—that can hit an electric utility.

As the book title Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Fiascoes, Dead Ends, and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy implies, nuclear power has traveled a rough road. For the conclusion of POWER’s exclusive serialization of the book, we offer the “Epilogue: Some Dumb Ideas Never Die.” The first 12 installments are available in the POWER online archives.

New England’s big push toward gas-fired power collided hard with its historical pipeline constraints this past winter, leaving multiple generators unable to respond to start-up requests from ISO-New England during a major storm. In the wake of the episode, the region is looking for some long-term solutions.

Decisions about design and operational options often are determined by one metric: the impact on the cost of electricity produced. An enhanced screening algorithm for power generation system total ownership cost (capital and operating) and thermal performance (output and efficiency) simplifies the analysis.

A combination of factors, including a relative scarcity of projects, has cut demand for skilled labor in the power generation sector. Despite the lull, workforce retirements are still expected to challenge the industry.

As the book title Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Fiascoes, Dead Ends, and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy implies, nuclear power has traveled a rough road. In this POWER exclusive, we present the 22nd and 23rd chapters, “The Jimmy, Ron, and Mo Show” and “Screw Nevada and Nevada Will Screw You,” the last two chapters of the “Waste Is a Terrible Thing to Mind” section.