POWER
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Water
Rethinking Wastewater Treatment for Better FGD Economics
POWER’s 2020 Water Award goes to Saltworks Technologies for successfully piloting a novel application of a 50-year-old technology at a coal plant. The company’s solution promises to slash costs of treating
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Smart Grid
Smart Neighborhood Wins Smart Grid Award
Alabama Power’s Smart Neighborhood integrates a microgrid into a community filled with high-performance homes containing energy-efficient systems and connected appliances. The innovative initiative, which
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News
Company’s Mission: A Clean Energy Building, and Living Laboratory
Embracing sustainability is more than a slogan for Delta Electronics (Americas); it’s defined by the company’s headquarters building. The site incorporates Delta’s own technologies to promote energy
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News
Power Project Provides Shelter from the Storm
Dozens of microgrids are deployed at schools across Puerto Rico, bringing reliable, resilient power to the island. The project, featuring solar plus storage, is an important part of the region’s recovery
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Power
THE BIG PICTURE: Pandemic Impact on Demand
The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a macroeconomic shock that is unprecedented in peacetime. By the end of the first quarter, its effects on global power demand were deep, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted in a flagship report released on April 30. The international organization, which has collected daily data for more than 30 countries […]
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Nuclear
Fusion Energy Is Coming, and Maybe Sooner Than You Think
The joke about fusion energy is that it’s 30 years away and always will be. But significant recent advances in fusion science and technology could potentially put the first fusion power on the grid as soon
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Markets
COVID-19 Makes for an Interesting Summer Peak Season
It’s peak season for the U.S. power industry. While actual dates may vary from one utility to another, generally the summer peak period spans from Memorial Day (May 25 this year) to Labor Day (Sept. 7)
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Environmental
Industry to Explore Decentralized Nuclear Waste Disposal
Efforts to explore whether it is feasible to permanently dispose of high-level nuclear waste in deep horizontal boreholes under next-generation nuclear reactor sites got a boost in late April as nuclear waste
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News
Renewables Gain Investors as Some Flee Oil, Gas, and Coal
The global crash of prices for crude oil, on top of a prolonged slump in the price of natural gas, is taking a toll on the oil and gas sector. The coal industry also continues to suffer, as the supply of
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News
Record-Low Solar Prices Drive Middle East Projects
Abu Dhabi Power Corp. (ADPower) in late April announced what it called the lowest-ever cost-competitive tariff for a solar photovoltaic (PV) project, a few months after a project in Dubai made that claim for
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Business
Executing Successful Projects with Reality Capture Technology
Standard general arrangement drawings, and piping and instrumentation diagrams, serve a purpose, but they are not ideal records for as-built project documentation. 3D reality capture offers a better
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Supply Chains
Equipment Showcase: Construction Equipment
Construction equipment is a critical part of the power generation industry, as new facilities are built and older facilities are upgraded to enhance efficiency and comply with evolving regulations. The
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Waste to Energy
Waste-to-Energy Strategies Are Not Dead
Few waste-to-energy (WTE) plants have been completed in the U.S. since the mid 1990s, but the story is different around the world, where WTE technology is seen as a suitable solution to municipal solid waste
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T&D
How Our Current Power Grid Is Failing Us
As coal prices fluctuate and regulations increase, utilities are phasing out dirty coal sources. With renewable energy like solar and wind set to become the fastest-growing sources of electricity generation in
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News
POWER Digest [June 2020]
SGRE Signs Deal for O&M on Wind Turbines. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) has secured a long-term, 20-year contract to provide full-scope operation and maintenance (O&M) services for a 135-MW
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News
Coal to Gas—Medical Campus Gets a Generation Transformation
When a hospital’s primary mission is keeping people healthy, what happens when a power plant gets sick? That was the situation that faced the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center (MRMC) when it’s circa 1950
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News
BACNet Protocol Can Change Energy Storage Industry
The growth of the energy storage industry in the past few years has been huge, and the sector is expected to add another 2 GW of capacity in 2020. In many ways, energy storage solutions (ESS) are at the
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Commentary
Filed Rate Doctrine: A Powerful Tool in Energy Litigation
The regulatory landscape for the energy industry has changed significantly in the past few decades, but a century-old Supreme Court canon—the filed rate doctrine—continues to be a valuable tool for
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Workforce
Assembling a Skilled Workforce in 2020 and Beyond
Many companies say their employees are their greatest assets, yet they don’t all invest the time or resources necessary to find the best people for open positions. Creating a sound recruiting program and
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News
Offshore Wind Finding Direction in U.S.
Europe has a big head start globally when it comes to generating power from offshore wind installations. The U.S. has lagged due to a variety of factors, including the need to work through regulatory issues
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Fuel
A Nuclear Power Side Venture: Medical Isotope Production
Earlier this year, nuclear technology giant Framatome and power sector lifecycle management service company Kinectrics launched an Ontario-based joint venture, Isogen, whose mission is to enable the use of
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News
Innovative Distributed Generation Projects Provide Power to Remote Areas
Remote communities have become testing grounds for innovative power projects. These areas traditionally have been powered by fossil fuel generation, usually diesel fuel or oil and sometimes natural gas, and
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Coal
Coal Plant Conversion to Non-Recyclable Plastic Waste Combustion Advances
A hundred metric tons of innovative fuel pellets derived entirely from biogenic and plastic waste material—which would otherwise be bound for a landfill—have been successfully produced, marking a
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Geothermal
Is Geothermal Power on the Brink of a Boom?
After several years of stagnancy, prospects for the geothermal power industry are heating up. Over the past year, it has seen a flurry of legislative boosts, an uptick of power purchase agreements, and
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Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity Is More Important Than Ever Due to COVID-19
The COVID-19 outbreak has forced many companies to change the way they conduct operations. Leaders have had to divide employees into essential and non-essential categories. Essential employees must report to
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Finance
THE BIG PICTURE (Infographic): Capital Costs
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in February 2020 published capital costs and performance characteristic estimates for 25 new electric power generating technologies. These estimates come from global engineering and design firm Sargent & Lundy (S&L), which the EIA commissioned to help accurately reflect the changing cost of new power generation technologies for the Annual Energy […]
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News
POWER Digest [May 2020]
OPG Reaches First Criticality at Darlington 2, Delays Work at Unit 3. Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG’s) Darlington Unit 2 reactor, the first of four reactors the company is overhauling at the Darlington
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News
HVTS Stops Alloy 625 Weld Overlay Corrosion in Waste-to-Energy Boiler
A boiler at the Renergia waste incineration plant in Perlen, Switzerland, was experiencing fireside corrosion. The shop-applied Alloy 625 weld overlay was showing signs of premature accelerated degradation
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Legal & Regulatory
Solving Issues of Power Deliverability for Offshore Wind Generation
Offshore wind generation could be a game-changer for U.S. generation—tremendous size, scalability, high capacity factors, zero-carbon, zero-cost fuel, and a proven track record in the UK and Europe. The
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Water
How to Effectively Minimize Power Plant Water Usage
Power plants across the U.S. are working to minimize water use in order to comply with regulatory requirements and offset the growing cost of water. This article offers some important recommendations to manage