Global Monitor

Fortum Värme, a company jointly owned by Finnish energy firm Fortum and the city of Stockholm on May 9 inaugurated a new biomass-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant on the shores of Värtan, a strait in Sweden’s capital city. The Värtan CHP8 (130 MWe, 280 MWth), which began construction in 2013, will begin commercial […]

Fuel cells are a rapidly expanding option for distributed generation, with fuel cell–based power plants now being deployed in capacities into tens of megawatts (see “59-MW Fuel Cell Park Opening Heralds

China’s CAP1400—a reactor design based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor—has successfully passed the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) Generic Reactor Safety Review. The milestone is significant for China, which plans to deploy the advanced reactor design in large numbers (Figure 4) as well as export the technology. 4. On the nuclear horizon. An artist’s […]

Plans are under way to install a pilot 1-MWh lithium battery–based storage system in 2018 at the world’s first floating wind farm in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The “Batwind” system, to be installed at

China unveiled its 13th Five-Year Plan this March. The official proposal that will guide the country’s economic and social development from 2016 through 2020 lays out targets and other measures to address a number of climate change, air pollution, and water policies that will build on progress to transform its power sector. The plan sets […]

Droughts attributed to the El Niño phenomenon have gripped Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia. Bogotá in April prepared to ration power and instituted mandatory reductions in consumption, warning that

GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy is pulling out of Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), a company that in 2012 got the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) unprecedented approval to build and operate a full-scale laser uranium enrichment facility. The move was precipitated by a change in business priorities, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the GLE’s proprietary SILEX technology is […]

Ghana Starts Up Key Gas-Fired Power Unit. Ghana has inaugurated the first of two 180-MW units of a natural gas–fired power plant that it is banking on to boost the West African country’s electric reliability. President John Dramani Mahama inaugurated the first unit of the Sonon-Asogli project at Kpone, near the capital Accra, on April […]

Oil-rich Venezuela is gripped by a power crisis so debilitating that the government has instituted four-hour daily blackouts across most of the country, forced hotels and malls to generate their own power, and