Global Monitor

Pistachio plant gives new meaning to green/Slightly sun-powered grill/Will lithium revolutionize hydrogen storage?/Calpine’s major Geysers geothermal upgrade/Rhone-Alps is French PV hot spot/Fuel cell–powered ice-resurfacing machine/Westinghouse proposes revised AP100 design/Sandia perfects solar alignment/SCE wants comprehensive coal study/POWER digest

Siemens, E.ON to test world’s largest GTG / Midwest to add 76-MW peaker in Kansas / Tapping the sun near Phoenix / Georgia Tech developing 3-D PV nanocells / Wind farms with hydrogen backup? / BNSF , union come to terms / IPL to buy 200-MW wind project / India to improve environmental monitoring / POWER digest

World’s largest PV plant now in Portugal; latan 2 construction may resume; Allegheny to scrub Fort Martin plant; TVA will clean up big Dutch CC plant; Connecticut blesses six fuel cell projects; DOE approves IGCC plant in Florida; FERC relicenses Osage hydro plant; A nanotech perpetual motion machine?; POWER digest

Npower plans big coal plant in UK / Berkeley boffins make thermoelectric discovery / Rinspeed’s roadster: Fast, fun, and green / Dead chickens, the weirdest renewable / Siemens celebrating three big deals / Nevada Power picks P&W, CH2M Hill / Scuderi’s air-hybrid engine / Ovation for huge new Chinese coal plant / PG&E dips toe into wave power / POWER digest

Winter storms ravage Nebraska grid / Waste-fired plant coming to Arizona / Wartsila lands jobs in Azerbaijan, Sweden / Yet another controversial LNG project / Siemens lands two-gasifier order in China / IndyCars drink nothing but ethanol / New Otto/diesel engine to debut in Russia / POWER digest / Readers talk back

China to buy four AP1000 reactors / Midwest Gen, Blagojevich reach pollution deal / Behold, the carpet gasifier / AREVA casks green-lighted by NRC / Brookfield Power upgrades Oswego Falls / Korea fires up 50-MW landfill gas project / Alstom lands big Russian deal / POWER digest / Correction

DOE walks the clean coal talk / For Swedish nuke, a case of mistaken identity / Siemens completes big CHP plant / E.ON bets big on coal / BP Solar expands Maryland plant / GE scores big turbine deals / PSNH switches from coal to wood / EPRI tests solid-state current limiter / POWER digest

Renewables require rethinking just about everything/Torque-splitting drive train improves wind turbine reliability/Waste gas–burning engines reach milestone/Hybrid power plant targets pipeline losses/Power from paint/Gulf Coast Power Association conference report/Pat Wood talks about the challenges facing ERCOT

Fireproofing switchyards From an insurance carrier’s perspective, we fully condone the use of on-line condition monitoring for large, critical transformers ("Monitoring key gases in insulating oil keeps transformers healthy," POWER, October 2006). However, another issue that the transformer failure and subsequent fire at Arizona Public Service’s West Wing Substation in 2004 highlights is the need […]

First live superconducting cable / Biggest CO2 storage project / Largest hydrogen-fueled plants / Record run for fuel cell cogen system / Largest PV plant still in Bavaria / Luz returns to U.S. / POWER digest

Demand records fall nationwide;
GE’s ABWR to be STP’s edge; Entergy buys Palisades plant; Dithering over desert disposal; Tourist trash-to-energy plant;
Brooklyn says "Yo!" to microturbines; POWER digest

Russia’s new nuclear navy;Russia’s old nuclear navy; First LMS100 fired up by Basin Electric;More Jenbacher gensets to Hungary; A baseload-size wind farm?; EEI bestows Edison Awards; POWERnotes
 

Cape Wind’s economics questioned The cited study concludes that the Cape Wind Project will "receive a 25% return on equity, 2.5 times the historical average for all corporations" when the present value of federal production tax credits, Massachusetts green credits, and accelerated depreciation for tax purposes are included. Our elected officials passed these laws, and […]

Nuclear hot streak continues/Who’s winning in U.S. wind power?/ Canadian wind picking up too/ Brazilian port powers itself/ Biomass meets CHP in Sweden/ Power surfing from Scotland to Germany

In late February, the largest gas turbine ever manufactured by GE Energy at its Belfort plant in France began a 30-day journey by land and sea that will take it to a new power plant in Spain. The Frame 9FB gas turbine—which is also the first built completely in Belfort—was loaded onto a special, wide-load […]

Earlier this February, Siemens Power Generation’s (SPG’s) factory in Berlin delivered its 500th gas turbine. The SGT5-4000F (Figure 2), formerly called the V94.3A, is nominally rated at 270 MW and weighs in at about 300 metric tons. With this shipment, the Berlin facility can boast of having built gas turbines with a cumulative capacity of […]

Thermal Engineering International (TEI) (USA) Inc. (Santa Fe Springs, Calif.)—a subsidiary of Babcock Power Inc. (Danvers, Mass.)—recently shipped two of the largest pressure vessels in the company’s 90-year history. The pair of huge (13-ft-diameter, 110-ft-long) moisture separator reheaters (MSRs) were designed at corporate headquarters and built in TEI’s factory in Sapulpa, Okla. The 300-ton MSRs […]

The California Energy Commission (CEC) recently awarded about $14 million for carbon sequestration projects to be overseen by the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership. Westcarb, as the partnership is known, is part of the U.S. DOE’s effort to deploy technologies through its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) program. New members Alberta and British Columbia […]

Global Monitor

Global Monitor

Global Monitor

Southern California Edison (SCE, Rosemead, Calif.) closed the 1,580-MW coal-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., on December 31. In a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), SCE said it expects the plant to remain off-line for four years—the time it will take for the utility and the plant’s other owners to battle […]

Global Monitor

Fluor Corp. (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) has finished building and commissioning the 620-MW Jack County power plant (Figure 2) near Jacksboro, Texas, for Waco-based Brazos Electric Cooperative Inc. The natural gas–fired, combined-cycle plant officially came on-line on February 1. 2. Texas 2 x 1 step. The gas-fired, 620-MW, combined-cycle Jack County Generation Plant was built and […]

Global Monitor

The Russian Federation plans to start building a floating nuclear power plant this year. According to the country’s atomic energy agency (Rosatom), the first plant will be small (3 MW) but could lead to the development of offshore plants with capacities of several hundred megawatts. The pioneering plant will be sited off the coast of […]

A new, mile-long submarine transmission cable in Pearl Harbor (Figure 3, p. 10) will facilitate the U.S. Navy’s plan to renovate and expand historic Ford Island. Honolulu-based Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc. (HECO) recently laid two new 46-kV lines beneath the bridge connecting the island to Oahu. The trickiest part of the installation was avoiding the […]

GE Energy’s latest "first" is in Turkey, where the Frame 6C gas turbine-generator—a younger cousin of the popular Frame 6B—has made its commercial debut. The turnkey 130-MW combined-cycle plant, called the GE206C, comprises two 40-MW Frame 6Cs, one GE steam turbine-generator, two heat-recovery steam generators, and a distributed control system. The gas-fired plant (Figure 1), […]

New Jersey’s gaming mecca is hosting one of the largest hybrid (solar-wind) power plants in the world (Figure 3). The Jersey-Atlantic Wind Farm, with 7.5 MW of wind capacity and 0.5 MW from photovoltaic (PV) cells, is expected to generate 20,000 MWh annually. That should be enough to power an adjacent wastewater treatment plant operated […]

The 130-MW Yuncán  hydroelectric plant (Figure 4) has come online in Peru about 210 miles northeast of Lima. To show his support for the project, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo Manrique attended the inauguration ceremony. Yuncán  was commissioned just 21 months after the Peruvian government awarded a 30-year contract to operate the plant to EnerSur, the […]