POWERnews

California’s governor demanded an investigation into the cause of a series of power outages—the first since an energy crisis in 2001—that blacked out parts of the state in recent days.  California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has struggled to ensure reliability since Friday, Aug. 14, when, amid triple-digit temperatures, it declared a statewide Stage 2 Emergency, […]

Late last week, to manage a potential large-scale power outage driven by triple-digit temperatures, the California Independent Service Operator (CAISO) called on utilities to implement rolling outages across the California grid. The shutdown of three natural gas power plants and a significant decline in available wind power were cited as the primary reasons behind the […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved to redesignate four new areas of Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas as being in attainment of air quality standards for sulfur dioxide (SO2).  The proposed actions issued over the past week provide a potential reprieve for several coal power plants, which would have needed costly pollution controls to […]

Siemens Energy will provide a hydrogen production system for a fueling station in Beijing, China. The company said it will be the “first megawatt green hydrogen production project in China.” “The decarbonization of the energy systems is a challenge that every country must face. Siemens Energy is the company that can provide its customers with […]

Unit 1 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sent its first electricity to the UAE grid on August 19, according to a statement from the country’s ambassador to the U.S. The Barakah facility is the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world. The plant became operational about three […]

Several companies have announced new energy projects in Texas, including three utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS), and a solar farm that will benefit customers in the western part of the state. The projects were announced August 19. In addition, officials in Houston on Wednesday said they have awarded a contract for a microgrid that […]

POWER Magazine   Jobs   White Papers  Webinars   Events   Store   August 17, 2020 Innovative Byproduct-Hydrogen Fuel Cell Power Plant Completed The largest industrial hydrogen fuel cell power plant in the world and the first to use only hydrogen recycled from petrochemical manufacturing has been placed in service by Hanwha Energy…   South […]

The small town of Cordova, Alaska, is located 150 miles southeast of Anchorage, near the picturesque head of the Orca Inlet on the Prince William Sound, at the mouth of the Copper River. It is renowned for its Copper River king and red salmon. Every year, the town transforms into a seafood and fishing powerhouse […]

Analysis from a global energy organization said power generation from coal-fired units fell 8.3% in the first half of 2020, with the world’s coal fleet running at less than half its capacity. The drop for U.S. coal generation was more steep, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reporting the output from the nation’s coal […]

An analysis of federal labor data for the clean energy sector shows renewable energy and other industries are adding jobs after months of declines brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. But the gains in July were lower than those in June, signaling sectors such as solar, wind, energy storage, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles continue […]

POWER Magazine   Jobs   White Papers  Webinars   Events   Store   August 13, 2020 Innovative Byproduct-Hydrogen Fuel Cell Power Plant Completed The largest industrial hydrogen fuel cell power plant in the world and the first to use only hydrogen recycled from petrochemical manufacturing has been placed in service by Hanwha Energy… Six Investing […]

The largest industrial hydrogen fuel cell power plant in the world and the first to use only hydrogen recycled from petrochemical manufacturing has been placed in service by Hanwha Energy at its Daesan Industrial Complex in Seosan, South Korea. The innovative plant uses “recycled hydrogen from petrochemical manufacturing” supplied by the Hanwha Total Petrochemical plant […]

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform to substantially boost national energy research experimental capability and allow the scientific community to explore fundamental challenges related to integrated energy systems at scale.  ARIES, which the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, developed over this […]

Investors in the global power and utilities sector embraced agendas that created long-term value during the first half of this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic roiled the world. Recent activity points to several interesting trends that will likely persist in a post-crisis world and may even accelerate change in the sector, new analyses from global […]

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) are teaming on a notable five-year-long initiative to accelerate development and demonstrate low-carbon technologies that they say are needed to help private companies and governments achieve increasingly ambitious decarbonization goals by 2050. The Low-Carbon Resources Initiative (LCRI), officially launched on Aug. 10, is […]

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 […]