POWERnews

Dominion Virginia Power on Friday asked the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) to approve construction of a 1,358-MW combined cycle natural gas-fired power plant to replace power from aging coal plants that the company has deemed are not economically or environmentally sound to continue operating.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) on Wednesday unanimously determined that imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and modules from China materially injured the U.S. industry, clearing the way for the Commerce Department to issue antidumping and countervailing duties on billions of dollars of products from China for the next five years. However, the ITC’s determination finds no critical circumstances were present, which means duties on Chinese solar module imports won’t apply retroactively.

FuelCell Energy Inc. on Monday announced an order from its South Korean partner, POSCO Energy, for 121.8 MW of fuel cell kits and services to be manufactured at the FuelCell Energy production facility in Torrington, Conn. The company said this represents the largest order for both its company and the fuel cell industry.

Berkeley, Calif., startup LightSail Energy, which aims to produce “the world’s cleanest and most economical energy storage systems,” has secured $37.3 million in a Series D round that included three big-name investors: Bill Gates, Vinod Khosla, and Peter Thiel.

Switzerland-based ABB today announced that it has developed the world’s first circuit breaker for high voltage direct current (HVDC), solving what it says has been “a 100-year-old electrical engineering puzzle and paving the way for a more efficient and reliable electricity supply system.” The breakthrough holds promise not just for renewables development but also for all types of generation that nations and regions wish to transmit over long distances, including under large bodies of water.

Tuesday saw the re-election of President Barack Obama, Democrats boosting their numbers in the U.S. Senate, and Republicans retaining their majority in the House. Voters in several states also cast ballots to decide a variety of environmental and energy issues at state and local levels. The results included rejection of a proposed raising of Michigan’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 25% by 2020 and passage of closing a tax loophole for out-of-state corporations in California to fund clean energy and energy efficiency projects.

An explosion at a 600-MW coal/biomass power plant in the eastern Netherlands city of Nijmegen early on Thursday morning sent steam clouds into the sky, scattered ceramic wool in the vicinity, and prompted police to advise nearby residents to keep their windows and doors shut. No casualties were reported, and all workers are accounted for, said GDF Suez, whose subsidiary Electrabel owns the plant.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has opened a formal investigation into the extended outages of Units 2 and 3 at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The investigation will determine whether to remove all costs related to SONGS from the rates of Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) going forward, and whether to refund SONGS-related costs already collected in rates back to Jan. 1, 2012.

On Tuesday morning, half a day after Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, the enormous storm, now being called a superstorm or a post-tropical cyclone, was still causing destruction far inland while as many as 6 million electric customers from Maine to North Carolina and west to Pennsylvania and West Virginia were without power.

Natural gas–fired generation gave up some ground to coal during the third quarter, and coal producers are optimistic that higher natural gas prices will benefit coal, especially coal sourced from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Even so, at least one Midwest utility expects natural gas to power what could be as much as 1,500 MW of new generating capacity it may add over the next several years.

Hitachi announced on Tuesday that it had acquired Horizon Nuclear Power in a deal expected to be completed by the end of November. In another example of the global nature of the nuclear business, the Japanese firm purchased Horizon, which was developed by the UK to build new nuclear plants, from German companies RWE and E.ON.

A massive blackout spanning 11 states in northeastern Brazil plunged nearly 53 million residents into the dark early on Friday morning. The event, caused by a "total collapse" of the northeastern grid, has raised concerns about electric reliability in South America’s largest economy, which is gearing up to host the World Cup soccer tournament in 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Four coal and two oil generating units at two of the oldest power plants owned by Santee Cooper are to be retired. South Carolina’s state-owned utility said last week that the decision was reached by its board of directors after considering generation resource needs and the cost of complying with new environmental regulations.

In a bid to encourage construction of new power plants in power-strapped Texas, the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) last week voted to double the wholesale price cap for electricity prices by the summer of 2015.

The first quarterly update from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reporting construction progress of the Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear reactor suggests that the project is on track for completion between September and December of 2015 and is within its budgeted cost range of $4 billion to $4.5 billion.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) on Tuesday awarded NRG’s Delaware-based unit Bluewater Wind a lease for commercial development of a 450-MW offshore wind farm on 96,430 acres of federal waters about 11 nautical miles off the coast of Delaware. But NRG last year put that project on hold and has considered selling it.

A 750-MW coal gasification plant with carbon sequestration proposed to be built in in Linden, N.J., is no longer under development, owner SCS Energy says on its website. The company said it has moved the commercial structure and process design for the PurGen project to the Hydrogen Energy California project, a fossil fuel gasification plant with carbon storage proposed for Kern County, Calif.

Duke Energy last week said that testing was under way in preparation for commercial operation next year of its 630-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) Edwardsport power plant in Knox County, Ind.

A task force appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Monday released a plan that calls for 3,200 MW of new power generation and transmission capacity funded with up to $5.7 billion in private investments.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week proposed to require new standards addressing the impacts of a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD), saying that, though it recognized the strong disturbances that result in distortions to Earth’s magnetic field are infrequent, current mandatory reliability standards do not adequately address vulnerabilities.

The Kewaunee Power Station—a 556-MW nuclear facility in Carlton, Wis.—will be shut down and decommissioned starting in the second quarter of 2013, its owner Dominion said on Monday. The company said the decision to shutter the plant was based “purely on economics.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) extended until Nov. 29 an administrative stay of a federal implementation plan to address regional haze under the Clean Air Act at PNM Resources’ 1,800-MW San Juan Generating Station near Farmington, N.M. The agency’s action last week  gave the utility 45 more days to consider an alternative proposed by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), but did  not extend the current September 2016 compliance date of the federal implementation plan.

The owner of one of Victoria’s largest coal-fired power stations announced on Wednesday it would cut output at the Gippsland-based Yallourn power station, saying the July 1-implemented carbon tax is driving up operating costs and that Australia’s renewable energy target is squashing wholesale power prices to uneconomic levels.

Louisville Gas and Electric Co. (LG&E) on Monday said it would shut down three coal units in Kentucky—a total capacity of 563 MW—eight months earlier than originally planned.

The Department of Interior on Friday finalized its Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), establishing an initial set of 17 solar energy zones totaling about 285,000 acres of public lands that will serve as priority areas for commercial-scale solar development. The initiative is part of the Obama administration’s goal to authorize 10,000 MW of renewable power on public lands.

Bruce Power on Tuesday synchronized its Bruce Power Unit 2 to Ontario’s grid, marking a milestone in its program to refurbish Units 1 and 2 at the Bruce A nuclear generating station. The company, which synchronized the 750 MW Bruce A Unit 1 with the grid on Sept. 19, said that first synchronization of Unit 2 will allow it to carry out final planned commissioning activities at the plant.

A bipartisan delegation of lawmakers from Pennsylvania on Monday urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider creating a separate subcategory for power plants that convert coal refuse into energy in its final Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS). Though waste coal plants made an important environmental contribution by reducing coal refuse piles, the hydrochloric acid (HCl) standard in the MATS rule could push them out of business, they said.

A123 Systems, maker of an advanced lithium iron phosphate battery and energy storage systems on Tuesday filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11, as Satcon, a provider of utility-grade power conversion solutions for the renewable energy sector, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday appealed a federal court decision handed down on Aug. 21 that vacated the agency’s July 2011–finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) because, the court said, it violated federal law. The EPA is now seeking a rehearing en banc that would involve all eight judges that serve at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Wednesday issued an air quality plan approval for a project to build the state’s first power plant to run at least partially on locally sourced Marcellus Shale gas. Moxie Energy’s proposed 936-MW plant in Asylum Township, Bradford County, uses two power blocks that will each consist of a combustion gas turbine and a steam turbine.