POWER

Entergy Corp., a dominant investor-owned utility in the middle south, hugging the Mississippi River drainage area from New Orleans to Memphis (including a piece of Texas), faces what may be a unique generation

Vattenfall has dismantled five offshore wind turbines—with a total capacity of 10 MW—at the Yttre Stengrund wind farm in Kalmar Sound, Sweden. The month-long decommissioning project was the first in the

A nuclear power plant in Australia—a country that harbors the world’s largest resources of uranium but uses no nuclear power—wouldn’t be economical, but building a nuclear storage and disposal facility

The first of two 500-kW OpenHydro tidal turbines has been successfully deployed at French utility EDF’s much-watched Paimpol-Bréhat tidal project, which is under construction in North Brittany, France. When

Blades are probably the most delicate part of a wind turbine and the most susceptible to accidental damage. Some estimates suggest that greater than 90% of wind turbine blades are damaged to some degree while

Distributed generation (DG) is receiving much attention as a resource that can facilitate the development of a smarter, more resilient, and more sustainable electric grid. Several jurisdictions, including New

If you’re still thinking of drones and robots as more toy than tool, think again. The drones now working in the power sector have gone far beyond remote-control hobbies and now resemble something closer to

In 2000, the world had installed just 1 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity (in DC terms—see the sidebar, “AC or DC?”), a number that had surged to 39 GW by 2010 and 176 GW in 2014. Fueled by

In the January issue, I introduced the concepts of highly reliable organizing (HRO) and resilience engineering with a promise to address the remaining principles. As a quick review of the first article

Although other renewable sources of energy may be growing at a faster rate, more electricity continues to be generated in the U.S. by conventional hydropower than by wind, solar, and geothermal power combined

Geothermal technology, though over a century old, is constantly changing. Developments in mapping techniques have improved exploratory practices. Plant adaptations, such as hybrid technologies and the

The disposal of coal ash, a combustion byproduct from coal-fired power plants, was propelled into the national conversation on December 22, 2008, when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston power plant suffered one of the largest coal ash spills in history. Calls for regulatory action shifted pitch again after the Duke Energy Dan River spill […]

The coal ash spill in December 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal-fired Kingston power plant may have triggered regulatory action, but it wasn’t the first or the most devastating disaster in the coal industry’s history. Coal Ash Spills at Power Facilities [gss name=”example1″ link=”none” ids=”85886,85788,85786,85790,85778,85888,85794,85784,85776″] Other Notable Coal Ash Spills [gss name=”example2″ link=”none” ids=”85772,85780,85782″] —Sonal […]

Legal battles to stall the 11-GW Belo Monte hydroelectric dam—being built on the Xingu River in Amazon forest for one of the world’s largest power plants—are raging on in Brazil (Figure 1). In January

Tremors in China’s economy rattled its power sector last year. For the first time since the Cultural Revolution in 1968, the country’s power generation dropped from the previous year—modestly, by 0.2%

Regulatory attention is rarely welcome in the best of times. When the attention is focused on a practice that has been standard operating procedure for more than a century—especially a practice that has left

Gas power technologies set new benchmarks over the past few months as gas turbine “gorillas” Siemens, General Electric (GE), and Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas (MHPSA) all reported new

The world’s first 1,400-MW Advanced Pressurized Reactor (APR1400), a South Korean Generation III design, has now been connected to the grid. Nearly eight years since construction kicked off in October

At the ballyhooed Paris climate conference last December, a little-noticed event occurred that could lead to important developments for electric generators. At the Paris meeting, some 80

Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition) was adopted as policy beginning in September 2010, some six months before the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, and full legislative support was

In late 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published new regulations governing wastewater discharge from steam electric power plants. These new regulations, or effluent limitation guidelines

There may be multiple closed-loop cooling systems at your power plant. Chances are good that they cool or control temperature on some very critical components. The two that are most likely to exist are the

Utility holding company Xcel Energy, headquartered in Minneapolis and with large electric and gas operations in eight states in the upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountain West, and Texas, has ambitions to be the

Generating companies wondering if concerns about cybersecurity are overblown got some rude wake-up calls this winter. The first call came when Ukrainian media reported that a December 23 blackout that left

In a growing number of regions, power plants are competing with many other users for scarce freshwater supplies, and the situation is likely to get worse. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently

Many combined cycle and cogeneration plants with heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) were originally intended as baseload power sources or steam producers. In recent years, however, some have been

Exelon Completes Peach Bottom Reactor Uprate. An extended power uprate (EPU), begun in 2009 to increase the output from the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station by 270 MW, was completed in January, said the

Desert sand from the United Arab Emirates could be used in concentrating solar power (CSP) facilities to store thermal energy up to 1,000C. And replacing the typical heat storage materials used in thermal

John J. Novak The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan is arguably the most ambitious and far-reaching regulation in the agency’s history. America’s electric cooperatives