POWER
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Nuclear
Age-Old Problem in Search of a Solution
Industry experts agree that deep geological repositories are needed for long-term storage of spent reactor fuel. They’re also digging for alternative methods. The U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year
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News
Vietnam Wants More Generation Capacity, Less Reliance on Coal
Vietnamese officials earlier this year said they want the country to more than double its power generation capacity by 2030, to as much as 130 GW from the current capacity of about 55 GW. The Communist Party
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Fuel
Big Oil Makes Concerted Push into Power
BP made headlines in early August when it announced it wants to develop about 50 GW of net renewable generating capacity by 2030—a 20-fold increase from the 2.5 GW deployed in 2019—as part of a new
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Infographics
THE BIG PICTURE (Infographic): Hybrid Power
At the end of 2019, 125 projects larger than 1 MW were co-located with other generators or storage at a single point of interconnection across the U.S., according to a July 2020 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. These “hybrid/co-located” projects, which exist in various configurations, represent a combined 13.4 GW of generating capacity and […]
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Business
Is LCOE the Best Metric for Choosing New Power Resources?
Costs for wind and solar power systems have been declining for years thanks to technology improvements, economies of scale, and fierce competition in auctions. In the second half of 2019, the levelized cost of
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Energy Storage
Energy Storage: America’s New R&D Priority to Secure the Grid
The U.S. Department of Energy has made the research and development (R&D) of long-duration energy storage at fossil fuel generating stations a priority to keep reliable and affordable supplies of
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T&D
Putting Idle Turbine Generators to Work
As more wind and solar generation is added to the power grid and large coal and nuclear plants are retired, a reduction in reactive power is becoming a concern. Underutilized gas and steam turbines can be
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News
Geothermal Project Powers Airport Expansion
Vancouver International Airport is the largest facility in British Columbia and requires a lot of heating and cooling. Those needs will be increased by a $300 million expansion designed to add 300,000 square
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IIOT
Utilities Forecasting with AMI Amid COVID-19
COVID-19 has caused a dramatic shift in the consumption of electricity across the U.S. Stay-at-home mandates have forced millions of businesses to close or shutter their offices and storefronts, dramatically
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Legal & Regulatory
Fixed-Volume Hedges Help Bring Revenue Certainty
With a lack of attractive solar power purchase agreements (PPAs) available in the market, project owners have been seeking alternative arrangements to secure long-term revenue certainty. One alternative is a
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News
POWER Digest [September 2020]
Milestone for First 700-MW Domestically Built Indian Nuclear Reactor. Unit 3 of the Kakrapar nuclear power plant in the Indian state of Gujarat—an indigenously designed 700-MW pressurized heavy water reactor
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News
How COVID-19 Crisis Response Informs Next Steps for Climate Mitigation
When the pandemic hit New York state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo began holding daily media briefings to provide updates and reassurances—and most days, he would challenge New Yorkers to learn the lessons of this
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News
Equipment Showcase: Turbomachinery
Turbines—whether powered by steam, water, natural gas, or some other fluid—are vital to the generation of electricity. Many companies in the power industry are focused on designing, manufacturing, and
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Technology
Technology in Construction: Matching Solutions to Specific Challenges
This is the last of a three-part series on technology in construction. In the May issue, Part I focused on predicting and adapting to change. Part II—in the July issue—examined choosing and implementing
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Connected Plant
4 Ways Southeast Power’s Fleet Team Has Leveled-Up Since COVID-19
“Things keep going,” Brent Tomamichel, fleet manager of Southeast Power (Figure 1), said when asked to describe the current state of the power industry. “Our industry is unique in that way; no matter what is happening in the world, everyone needs and wants their power on.” If you’re one of the more than 1.9 million people […]
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Technology
Mobile Devices to Support the Utility Industry
Field service workers often log long hours at remote job sites where no two days are the same. To support daily tasks, whether they be at a power plant, oil rig, or other hard to access environments, advanced technologies have become more commonplace to get the job done. With the rapidly evolving nature of technology […]
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Coal
Xuzhou 3 Shows the Future of Subcritical Coal Power Is Sublime
A remarkable retrofit at Xuzhou Unit 3 boosted the 320-MW subcritical coal unit’s efficiency to beyond 43.56%—higher than all existing Chinese supercritical units, and even many ultrasupercritical units
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Plant Design
Efficiency a Priority at Caofeidian Coal Power Plant
Coal power may be struggling in some parts of the world, but it’s doing just fine in China. New plants are coming online featuring state-of-the-art technology. Two ultrasupercritical units added at the
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Coal
Digitization Drives Efficiency at Turkish Coal Plant
The CENAL TES, or Karabiga, power plant in Turkey is a model for the use of high-performance technology and digital software to power an ultrasupercritical coal-fired facility. Coal continues to be the primary
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Coal
Khargone: India’s High Efficiency Leap
Indian power giant NTPC commissioned the second unit of the vast 1,320-MW Khargone Super Thermal Power Project in Madhya Pradesh this March, completing its first ultrasupercritical power plant. The project’s
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Coal
Success Through Engineered Upgrades and a Focus on Behavior
It sounds kind of strange, but you don’t always know, what you don’t know. That was the case at a Thai coal plant. When it started burning Indonesian subbituminous coal, operators didn’t know how dusty
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T&D
Electric Transmission Grid Problems and Solutions
Many of the electric transmission grids in service around the world were designed and built more than a half century ago. While changes and upgrades have obviously been made over the years, the systems were
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News
Pandemic Brings Pause, but Future Looks Bright
The solar power industry has been hammered by the global lockdowns due to the coronavirus, but technology advancements that continue to lower costs point to a rapid recovery. The COVID-19 pandemic has not been
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Nuclear
How to Build an On-Time, On-Budget Nuclear Power Plant
Building a new nuclear power plant is challenging. Nuclear construction projects always seem to be behind schedule and over budget. Even in the late 1960s and early 1970s—arguably nuclear power’s
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Supply Chains
The Growing Strain of Power Sector Supply Chain Disruptions
Power sector supply chains, hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, are feeling the double whammy of uncertainty posed by a broad U.S. executive order. As was clear at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s
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News
South Korea Forays into Gas Turbine Manufacturing
Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction (DHIC) this summer made major strides to establish itself at the core of South Korea’s strategy to become only the fifth country to own an independent gas turbine
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News
POWER Digest [August 2020]
Utility Expects New Schedule for Olkiluoto 3 Reactor. Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) said it expects to soon receive the revised schedule from the Areva-Siemens consortium for the commissioning of the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) EPR. Fuel loading of the reactor, which was planned for June, has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and other […]
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Nuclear
License Renewals Could Modernize U.S. Nuclear; Supply Base Will Need to Keep Pace
Nuclear power plants approaching license expiration are faced with three options: obtain initial license renewal to continue operations (nine U.S. units have not yet received an extension of their initial
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News
China Seeks Grid Parity for Renewable Energy
Developers of renewable energy projects in China are ramping up efforts to move their installations forward, after delays from the coronavirus pandemic slowed the government’s plan to have solar and wind
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Connected Plant
The Role of Virtual Power Plants in a Decentralized Power Grid
Virtual power plants are becoming a driving force in the power sector. This article explains how they enable utilities and aggregators to pool production from multiple plants and distributed sources, achieving