Features

Shrinking water supplies will unquestionably constrain the development of future power plants. A hybrid system consisting of concentrated solar thermal power and desalination to produce water for a plant, integrated with a combined cycle or conventional steam plant, may be the simple solution.

In 2006 and 2007, POWER ran a three-part series on the formation of SO₃, O&M issues caused by SO₃, and sorbent injection control for SO₃ control. Three years later, many plants still struggle with their SO ₃ mitigation systems or remain undecided on which mitigation path to follow. This article explores the advantages of dry sorbent injection technology.

Offers of nuclear loan guarantees are pending, construction permit applications are at an industry high, and the political stars seem to be properly aligned. However, there remains one obstacle in the development path of the next-generation of nuclear plants: How will these plants be financed?

Mexico’s federal government retains almost total control over who builds and owns what electricity infrastructure. But if you know how to work within the strict constraints, it is possible to engage in profitable projects.

NAFTA was both good and bad for Mexico. In both cases, it required a different approach to doing business, and the effects of that shift are still playing out.

State control of the electricity sector may mean fewer customers, but it also can mean clearer expectations.

How much will a smart grid cost? It’s a question that has gained importance in light of massive cost overruns for one highly touted U.S. project.

In response to Ontario’s provincial regulatory mandates to phase out the use of coal by the end of 2014, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is exploring its capability to employ biomass feedstocks to displace coal in some units within the OPG thermal fleet. The primary fuels employed during the respective trials at its Nanticoke and Atikokan Generating Stations have been agricultural by-products and commercial grade wood pellets. The Canadian utility has learned valuable lessons about fuel supply and logistics, and the technical challenges of safely handling and firing high levels of biomass.

The EUCG Nuclear Committee has collected benchmarking data of U.S. nuclear plant staffing for many years. A summary of this highly desirable data was gleaned from EUCG databases and is now, for the first time, made public through an exclusive agreement with POWER.

The power industry needs a straightforward definition of "fleet optimization" and a game plan to achieve the promised economic gains of optimizing. This need has become more urgent because integrating nondispatchable renewable resources requires more complex optimization strategies. The bottom-up approach presented here applies well-understood optimization principles and techniques that will help power producers minimize their fleetwide cost of production, independent of the technologies used to generate electricity.