POWER

Global Monitor

Global Monitor

Competition in power generation fosters technical innovation, cleaner power plants, and downward pressure on prices. Before the 1980s, such competition was almost nonexistent: vertically integrated utilities built and operated the vast majority of U.S. plants with oversight by state regulators. The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 and the Energy Policy Act of 1992 […]

With U.S. combined-cycle plants increasingly being cycled—rather than being run continuously, as they were designed to do—owner/operators worry that units expected to last two or three decades may survive only a few years without an expensive overhaul. Cycling takes as much of a toll on heat-recovery steam generators as it does on gas turbines. Whether you’re procuring a new HRSG or adapting an existing one for cycling service, robust design features should be what you’re looking for.

I couldn’t help but marvel at the synchronicity of two unrelated events over the past few weeks. The first, on January 12, was the rare cancellation of a major military acquisition program with problems called "too expensive to fix." It takes an Act of Congress to kill most military contracts due to the pork flowing […]

The U.S. power generation industry is changing at warp speed, via regulatory changes, consolidation, mergers, and sales of assets at yard-sale prices. New players have entered the market and become major players overnight, while several mainstays have gone bankrupt. Though many of the latter blamed high gas prices for their woes, well-diversified merchants enjoyed a record year. Whatever changes are in store for the business of combined-cycle generation, you can be sure that innovations in plant design and O&M such as those described in this special section will keep pace with them.

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 […]

Designers of heat-recovery steam generators are using computational fluid dynamics software as one tool to reveal the invisible forces affecting the flow over, under, around, and through structures such as inlet ducts, distribution grids, and guide vanes.

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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 […]