POWERnews

Dutch utility company Eneco and Shell have been chosen by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy to develop a radical new offshore wind farm incorporating technologies such as floating solar, short-duration battery storage, and green hydrogen production. The Hollandse Kust (Noord) facility will be developed by Eneco and Shell by their CrossWind […]

The transformation of the power landscape involves more than just generation. The distribution of electricity is being changed as well, with technology designed to make electrical systems safer, more reliable, and more efficient. Atom Power, which last year introduced the first digital circuit breaker, is among the companies engineering change in the power sector. Atom, […]

Russian energy officials said they have begun loading fuel into the first reactor at the new Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), while at the same time confirming plans for the start-up of a second reactor at the site in Astravets. The plant is the first nuclear power facility to be built in Belarus. The project […]

Power generation companies, like other businesses, have altered operations due to COVID-19. And it’s more than just having employees work remotely, wear masks, and social distance. Managing data and documents with new protocols in place is critical to any asset-intensive industry, and electricity providers are no different. The Kinsmen Group, an engineering and information management […]

POWER Magazine   Jobs   White Papers  Webinars   Events   Store   August 6, 2020 Group to Cities: Get Out of Nuclear Project While You Can The Utah Taxpayers Association has urged cities and towns that have subscribed to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) small modular reactor (SMR) project to withdraw from […]

Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), New Jersey’s giant utility, has become the latest major U.S. power company to seek an exit from the competitive generation business.  In a statement attached to the company’s second-quarter 2020 earnings results released on July 31, Ralph Izzo, PSEG chairman, president, and CEO, said the company is “exploring strategic alternatives” […]

How electricity is delivered to customers in the U.S. is complicated. Consumers in some states have no choice who supplies their power; state commissions regulate utilities as vertically integrated electricity providers. Other states utilize a competitive model in which power producers can openly access transmission infrastructure and participate in wholesale electricity markets. Yet, there isn’t […]

U.S. utilities have made a significant move away from coal-fired power generation in the past decade, evidenced by a continuing stream of announced coal plant retirements. That transition has been partly driven by new generation from renewable resources, such as wind and solar power. New data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released August 5, […]

The Utah Taxpayers Association has urged cities and towns that have subscribed to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) small modular reactor (SMR) project to withdraw from the venture before a Sept. 14 deadline that would lock them into a share of billions of dollars in costs associated with the undertaking. Rusty Cannon, vice […]

Unit 1 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, the first nuclear power facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), achieved successful startup August 1. It’s another milestone in the process to deliver power from the project to the UAE grid, with commercial operation of Barakah expected later this year. The startup of Unit 1 marks […]

Southern Co. says it remains on schedule to complete Units 3 and 4 of the Vogtle nuclear expansion project by November 2021 and November 2022, respectively, despite the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company in its 2020 second-quarter earnings report on July 30 said issues associated with the coronavirus have increased subsidiary Georgia Power’s […]

POWER Magazine   Jobs   White Papers  Webinars   Events   Store   July 30, 2020 EPA Changes Closure Requirements in Coal Ash Rule The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 29 finalized several changes to the regulations for disposal of coal combustion residuals (CCRs), or coal ash, from electric utilities. The changes…   […]

What will it realistically take to ready a fission surface power system (FSP)—a small (maybe modular) nuclear reactor—for deployment on the moon by 2027? That’s essentially what Battelle Energy Alliance LLC (BEA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are asking the private sector in an interesting request for […]

Wind turbine maker Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) has lowered its sales forecast for 2020, and the company said it expects the economic impact of COVID-19 will cut €1 billion ($1.2 billion) from its sales revenue in the full year. The company in its latest earnings report, released July 30, said the impact of the […]

GE Gas Power and Uniper have agreed to roll out a detailed decarbonization roadmap that may entail hydrogen-friendly upgrades to all GE gas turbines and compressors at the German generation giant’s gas power plants and gas storage facilities across Europe.  Under the agreement, GE Gas Power and Uniper will form a joint working group to […]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 29 finalized several changes to the regulations for disposal of coal combustion residuals (CCRs), or coal ash, from electric utilities. The changes include giving utilities more time to design clean-up and closure plans for their coal ash storage sites. The changes stem from an opinion issued Aug. […]

The power generation industry has historically been a male-dominated industry, but today there are a number of women who have risen through the ranks to positions of leadership. Ana Amicarella, CEO of EthosEnergy, is one of them. EthosEnergy is a leading independent service provider of rotating equipment services and solutions to the power, oil and […]

A new battery energy storage system (BESS) at an electric substation in California is expected to be one of the world’s largest utility-owned, lithium-ion storage systems when it begins operating next year. The 182.5-MW BESS is being built by Tesla and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) at the utility’s substation in Moss Landing in Monterey […]

Officials with the ITER project in France said work has started on the assembly of giant components needed for construction of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, a project designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful use. The ITER group, in a ceremony July 28 that was broadcast online (see […]

Coal burn in the power sector has fallen off a cliff. Demand peaked at 1.045 billion tons in 2007. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates consumption in 2020 will be 377 million tons, a drop of 64% in little more than a decade. The EIA is forecasting a modest rebound in 2021 (to 462 […]

A global environmental group that works to protect land, water, and wildlife said states in what it considers the U.S. “wind belt” can develop wind power generation to meet renewable energy goals without presenting a significant risk to surrounding areas. An analysis from The Nature Conservancy, focused on the central U.S. where there is vast […]

POWER Magazine   Jobs   White Papers  Webinars   Events   Store   July 27, 2020 Rains Complicate Ethiopian Hydro Dam Dispute July 23, 2020: Ethiopia said it had reached a “major common understanding” with Egypt and Sudan related to the first filling and annual operation of the 6.4-GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), paving… […]

Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company, said it is ready to receive a shipment of the first full reload batch of fresh uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel for the BN-800 fast reactor at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Station, the nation’s oldest operating  nuclear energy facility. The company on July 23 announced the Mining and Chemical […]

POWER Magazine   Jobs   White Papers  Webinars   Events   Store   July 23, 2020 Rural Electric Cooperatives: Debt Rules Need to Change The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) is working feverishly to get a provision into the next COVID-19 stimulus package that would allow electric cooperatives to reprice loans from the… Duke […]

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility, operated by General Atomics for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is the largest magnetic fusion research facility in the U.S. The mission of the DIII-D research program is to establish the scientific basis for the optimization of the tokamak approach to fusion energy production. The DIII-D program is a […]

Ethiopia says it had reached a “major common understanding” with Egypt and Sudan related to the first filling and annual operation of the 6.4-GW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), paving the way to a “breakthrough agreement” in the contentious dispute that is primarily about use of the River Nile’s waters.   As POWER reported in […]

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have been dabbled with throughout the power industry for years. POWER featured a drone on its cover in April 2014, and has published many articles on drone technology since then. Yet, the technology has been used more as a novelty in the power sector up to this point. As […]

Duke Energy Progress, the Duke Energy subsidiary that serves about 1.6 million customers in the Carolinas, announced the completion of its new Asheville Combined Cycle Station in Arden, North Carolina. The company said the $817 million combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) facility (Figure 1) includes two power blocks with a total of four generators and […]

German energy supplier E.ON is collaborating with UK energy firms Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) and Costain Group to roll out an innovative business model that monetizes resilience and grid stability services to remote areas.  E.ON Innovation, one of Europe’s largest distribution system operators (DSOs) and the transmission and distribution arms at SSEN and […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) wants the electric power industry to help the DOE draft rules that will prohibit the U.S. bulk-power electric system from using equipment sourced from, or otherwise susceptible to, harmful influence by “foreign adversaries.” Asset owners, utility operators, equipment vendors, and other interested parties can voluntarily provide information to the DOE […]