Global Monitor

Water scarcity as it relates to energy use is becoming a major concern.

Energy policy in the European Union (EU) is in upheaval as concerns mount over the impact of energy costs on the competitiveness of the power industry.

An agreement signed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this May could pave the way for the world’s first ATMEA 1 reactors to be built in Turkey in the 2020s.

Despite technical and financial hurdles, annual global demand for grid-scale energy storage is expected to soar to 185.4 GWh by 2017, which means a possible 231% average year-on-year demand growth between 2012 and 2015, according to Lux Research.

German energy giant E.ON in late April narrowly averted idling its Irsching 4 and 5 units in Bavaria, Germany—its most technologically advanced gas-fired generating units that began operations just three years ago at a cost of €400 million.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt Sign $1.6 Billion Agreement to Link Electricity Grids. Under an agreement signed on June 1, Saudi Arabia’s majority state-owned utility, Saudi Electricity Co., and Egypt’s state power company, Egyptian Electric Holding Co., will share the cost of building a 3,000-MW undersea transmission cable to link their electricity grids. The $1.6 billion […]

A 10-MW ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) pilot plant is being planned off the coast of southern China by global security and aerospace firm Lockheed Martin and Beijing-based cleantech firm the Reignwood Group.

One of the first enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) was connected to the U.S. electric grid this April, marking a major milestone for the fledgling technology that seeks to tap the enormous terrestrial heat potential deep within Earth’s crust using directional drilling and pressurized water.

Ningde 1, the first of four Chinese-designed CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors being built at a site in Fujian Province, began commercial operation this April after a 58-month construction period.

NRC Poised to Rule on SCE Proposal to Restart San Onofre Unit 2. Southern California Edison (SCE) on April 5 submitted a voluntary request to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license amendment to support restart of Unit 2 of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and the NRC later said in a […]

The history of electric power has been stained by several devastating incidents triggered by natural hazards, technological failures, malicious actions, and human error.

A massive eight-year construction feat to bore a 41-foot-wide, 6.3-mile-long tunnel deep beneath hard rock under the City of Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, was successfully completed this March.

The global energy sector will need to invest half of current world gross domestic product over the next two decades in order to address a number of critical issues and expand and adapt the energy infrastructure, the London-based World Energy Council (WEC) says in its recently released World Energy Issues Monitor. Here are the most […]

India’s Reliance Power in March synchronized the first of six 660-MW units of its Sasan Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP) in the state of Madhya Pradesh, readying it to supply power to 14 distribution companies across seven states. The plant (Figure 1) has been hailed as India’s first supercritical project to integrate a coal mine—an important achievement in a country that is battling chronic coal shortages. Though India has large coal reserves, domestic mining companies are struggling to keep up with demand needed to sustain its existing coal plants, which account for 55% of its generation.

In the U.S., where construction of new nuclear reactors has stalled for three decades, two separate nuclear projects completed placement of basemat structural concrete for new AP1000 reactors a few days apart this March. SCANA Corp.’s South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) marked the milestone on March 11 (Figure 2), completing concrete placement of the nuclear island basemat for its V.C. Summer Unit 2 in Fairfield, S.C., while Southern Co.’s Georgia Power completed placement for a nuclear island at its Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear expansion site near Waynesboro, Ga., on March 14 (Figure 3).

Solar thermal technologies are experiencing increased popularity around the world. Three recent deployments illustrate how the technology and plant size specifics are tuned to local needs.

In a milestone for the fledgling marine power sector, Alstom’s 1-MW tidal turbine (Figure 6) generated power for the first time at the European Marine Energy Centre’s tidal test site in Orkney, Scotland.

Cuadrilla Delays UK Fracking Project to Conduct More Assessments. The UK’s largest shale gas explorer, Cuadrilla Resources Holdings, on March 14 said it would delay hydraulic fracturing operations at its Anna Road project until 2014, after data it had gathered from exploration of the Bowland Basin Shale in Lancashire confirmed assessments that the 1,200-square-kilometer license […]

Several European governments have so far this year bucked a reluctance to extract shale gas via hydraulic fracking even as the practice continues to be strongly opposed in countries like France and Bulgaria.

Protests in more than 20 cities by tens of thousands of Bulgarians over January electricity bills that averaged more than €100 ($130) forced the country’s prime minister, Boyko Borissov, and his center-right government to resign in mid-February.

Government decisions to subsidize renewable power to increase its capacity for environmental and security reasons have spurred investments but also increased cross-border tensions. Increasingly, legal actions that seek to settle international trade disputes allege unfair subsidization.

Four bouts of dense smog described as the worst air pollution in recent memory enveloped more than half of China in January, from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei triangle in the north of the country to Nanjing in the south, via the central city of Wuhan.

Construction of a $310 million repository about 250 meters below Earth’s surface for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste from the operation and future decommissioning of Hungary’s power plants reached a significant milestone at Bataapati.

Here are some of the longest pipelines recently built as well as noteworthy ones in the pipeline.

Japan’s scramble to replace generation lost from nuclear power plants that were shuttered after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident has forced it to rely on pricey imports of fossil fuels—and soaring energy costs are hammering the world’s third-largest economy.

A pervasive drought in northeast Brazil has dried up power supplies from the region’s hydropower facilities, making the area prone to blackouts and crippling economic growth in one of the country’s emerging agricultural havens.

Selected business news and deals in the power generation industry.

Mercury emissions from power plants in 137 United Nations member countries could be subject to strict controls and reductions if an international treaty is signed by participating nations this October.

Progress in electronics and information technology has created incentives to replace traditional analog instrumentation and control (I&C) systems in nuclear power plants with digital I&C systems, or systems based on computers and microprocessors. About 40% of the world’s operating reactors have been modernized to include at least some digital I&C systems, according to the International […]

The U.S. saw the historic start of operations at its first ultrasupercritical coal-fired power plant last December as Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s (SWEPCO’s) 600-MW John W. Turk, Jr. Power Plant switched on in Arkansas.