POWER
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Coal
Top Plant: Prairie State Energy Campus, Washington County, Illinois
Owner/operator: Prairie State Generating Co., LLC The Prairie State Energy Campus (PSEC) is likely the last of the multi-unit coal-fired power plants that will be built in the U.S. in the foreseeable future
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Coal
Top Plant: Shentou Second Power Plant, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province, China
Owner/operator: Shenhua Guoneng Energy Group Corp. Ltd. The 4 x 500-MW Shentou Second Power Plant is located in Shuozhou City in the northern Shanxi Province, a region notable for its mining of coal and other
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Gas
Practical Considerations for Converting Boilers to Burn Gas
Many utilities have taken advantage of relatively low-cost natural gas to address environmental pressures and upgrade their power generation portfolio in one of three distinct ways—replace, repower, or
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Environmental
Turning the Heat Up on Carbon Emissions
Although there have been previous attempts at the federal level to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from U.S. coal-fired power plants (remember the Waxman-Markey Bill, the American Clean Energy and
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Gas
Reciprocating Engines Continue to Be Flexible Workhorses
Gas Power Reciprocating gas engines find work in multiple power generation applications, from providing fast-start backup generating capacity for intermittent renewable resources to offering scalable and
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Nuclear
NuScale Puts Single-Minded Focus on Small Modular Reactor
2. Reactor module. The light water reactor NuScale Power Module is cooled by natural circulation and is entirely self-contained. Courtesy: NuScale The global nuclear industry has endured a rough patch since
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Coal
China Cancels 2-GW Coal Plant on Pollution Concerns
In a noteworthy measure this August, Chinese authorities scrapped proposals for a 2-GW coal-fired power plant, citing—for the first time—concerns about air pollution. And as the authorities in Baguang
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News
POWER Digest October 2013
Jordan’s First Nuclear Reactor Gets Construction Green Light. Jordanian regulators on Aug. 20 granted permission for construction to begin at the Jordan Research and Training Reactor (JRTR) at the Jordan
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Renewables
New Power-to-Gas Plant Inaugurated in Germany
A new 2-MW power-to-gas (P2G) plant inaugurated by Germany’s E.ON in late August will convert excess wind energy into synthetic natural gas that can then be fed into the regional gas grid, where it can be
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O&M
Focus on O&M: Replacing Multiple Turbine and BOP Control Systems with a Single Platform
Termoyopal, a utility based in Bogota, Colombia, recently repowered its power plant at Yopal, Colombia, by replacing three gas turbines with refurbished units and upgrading the remaining two turbines. The
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Power
When Policy and Construction Timelines Diverge
Have you ever been surprised to have a nice gift rejected? Well, that’s what happened to the POWER team this summer. This spring, we chose an interesting and diverse set of plants from around the world to
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Legal & Regulatory
New Measures Pit Indian Generators Against Equipment Makers
Energy-hungry India’s power sector is financially hemorrhaging due to a number of critical issues relating to the availability of coal and gas, its loss-making state power distribution companies, and costly
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Business
POWER Digest (September 2013)
Mexico Creates Council to Meet Clean Energy Target. The Mexican Energy Secretariat on July 5 announced creation of the Renewable Energy Council , a body designed to spearhead eight initiatives outlined in a
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Legal & Regulatory
PURPA at 35: At a Crossroads?
In March 2013, and for the first time in the 35-year history of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) initiated an enforcement action in
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Gas
Top Plant: Amman East Power Plant, Al Manakher, Jordan
Owner/operator: AES Jordan PSC AES Corp.’s $300 million, 370-MW gas-fired Amman East Power Plant entered commercial service in 2008 and was the first independent power plant in Jordan. The Jordanian
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Gas
Top Plant: Combined Cycle Power Plant Brazi, Brazi, Romania
Owner/operator: OMV Petrom S.A. Romania began the process of restructuring its vertically integrated, state-owned electricity industry to meet European Union (EU) directives several years before it joined the
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Gas
Top Plant: Cape Canaveral Next Generation Clean Energy Center, Brevard County, Florida
Owner/operator: Florida Power & Light No one can accuse Florida Power & Light (FPL) of having anything against natural gas. The biggest consumer of gas in a state with the second-biggest appetite for
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Gas
Top Plant: Sasol Gas Engine Power Plant, Sasolburg, South Africa
Once flush with cheap electricity, the Republic of South Africa has recently been beset by power shortages and reliability challenges as a result of decades of underinvestment in its electrical infrastructure
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Gas
Top Plant: Southcentral Power Project, Anchorage, Alaska
Owners: Chugach Electric Association Inc. and Anchorage Municipal Light & PowerOperator: Chugach Electric Association Inc. Alaska’s vast land mass broken up by mountainous regions and glacier fields does
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Instrumentation & Controls
Quantum Cryptography Promises Un-Hackable Industrial Communications
Cybersecurity awareness and best practices are increasingly central to the power generation, transmission, and distribution industry. Industrial cybersecurity concerns, recently heightened by awareness of how
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Instrumentation & Controls
What You Need to Know (and Don’t) About the AURORA Vulnerability
Perhaps because the public has been more obsessed in recent years by cybersecurity breaches involving everything from social media accounts to classified military secrets, the amount of attention given to the
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Nuclear
SILEX Process Promises Third-Generation Uranium Enrichment Technology for U.S.
On Sept. 25, 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a construction and operating license (COL) to General Electric-Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment LLC (GLE) for its uranium enrichment plant
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Commentary
Change and Continuity
Even if you missed Bob Peltier’s retirement signoff in last month’s column, you will have noticed that something has changed. POWER has a new editor at the top of the masthead (its 10th in 131 years
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Gas
Hints of What’s Next from GE on the Technology Front
When Gary Leonard, General Electric’s global technology director for aero-thermal and mechanical systems technologies, spoke with POWER Contributing Editor Mark Axford at this year’s Gulf Coast Power
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O&M
Considerations When Upgrading Gas Turbine HMIs
Aging human machine interface (HMI) hardware will eventually become a burden on plant operation. Obsolete HMIs can cause problems with connectivity, historical data loss, and hardware failure. As the hardware
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T&D
Potential Solutions for ERCOT’s Challenges
P at Wood III —former head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Texas Public Utility Commission, and current consultant and non-executive chairman of Dynegy—addressed a packed house at the
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Nuclear
Thorium Fuel Test Begins at Research Reactor in Norway
Norwegian company Thor Energy began a five-year-long irradiation test of thorium fuel at the Institute for Energy Technology’s research reactor in Halden, Norway, marking the most recent investigation into
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Business
New Products (September 2013)
HDE’s Quick-Check Transformer & Capacitor Testers provide a quick and easy test of the primary and secondary sides of de-energized transformers and capacitors for opens or shorts. The Quick-Check
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Renewables
The World’s Most Colossal Offshore Wind Farm Opens
The $2.9 billion London Array—the world’s biggest offshore wind farm—opened this July in the Outer Thames Estuary about 12 miles off the coasts of Kent and Essex. The 175-turbine installation is arranged