POWERnews

On Monday, Convert Italia and solar module maker Solaria Corp. announced they had begun operating in Puglia, Italy, what they called the largest low-concentrating solar PV power plant in the world.

The State Grid Corp. of China has begun construction of an 800-kV ultra-high-voltage direct current (UHVDC) transmission line that will run 2,210 kilometers (1,373 miles) from Hami Prefecture in China’s western province of Xinjiang to the north-central industrial city of Zhengzhou. When completed in 2014, the $3.7 billion line will have a transmission capacity of 8 GW.

Enriched uranium fuel supplier USEC on Tuesday struck a deal with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA, a federal agency), the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA, a federally owned corporation), and Energy Northwest (a municipal corporation of Washington State) to extend uranium operations at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, Ky., for at least another year.

A proposal launched on Tuesday by Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) could bar Chinese-made solar panels from qualifying for the existing 30% tax credit that U.S. individuals and businesses receive for purchasing and installing solar panels.

A Texas District Court judge on Monday signaled his intent to reverse and remand to the state a key air permit granted to the proposed $3.2 billion Las Brisas Energy Center (LBEC).

Duke Energy and Progress Energy customers would not shoulder charges for costs of about $450 million related to the utilities’ proposed $26 billion merger if the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) speedily approves the deal, according to an agreement between the companies and the state regulatory body that was disclosed Monday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard oral arguments last week in a case that examines whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should be required to continue the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository proposed for Nevada.

No timetable has been set for the restart of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) despite “erroneous reports” in the media that referred to June dates, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Gregory Jaczko said on Monday.

Texas will have 74 GW of generation resources available this summer, including nearly 2 GW of capacity that had been mothballed—but the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) still expects tight reserves and expects calls for conservation to deter rolling blackouts, the Texas grid operator said last week.

Vermont’s House last week voted 10–36 to give final passage to a bill that could make the state the first in the nation to ban the practice of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

A new report funded by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) that examines historical and current federal incentives in energy markets suggests that current solar industry incentives are consistent with previous development-stage energy sources subsidized by the U.S. government.

A new study from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should reevaluate the formula with which it calculates nuclear reactor decommissioning costs. In an analysis of 12 of the nation’s 104 reactors, decommissioning costs calculated for five reactors were 76% less than what would be required, Congress’ investigative arm says.

Integrys Energy Group subsidiary Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPS) on Monday filed for a Certificate of Authority (CA) from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSCW) to install Regenerative Activated Coke Technology (ReACT) at its 321-MW Weston 3 plant.

Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa on Monday said it would start the permitting process for the installation of its first offshore prototype, the 50-Hz G128-5.0 MW at Arinaga Quay in Spain’s Gran Canary Island—not Cape Charles, Va., as it had initially proposed. The decision was driven by technical and wind resource considerations, offshore market trends, and investment return criteria, the firm said.

Canadian energy firms TransAlta, Capital Power, and Enbridge last week scrapped plans for the much-watched Project Pioneer, a joint effort the companies were to undertake with the Canadian federal government and Province of Alberta to demonstrate commercial-scale viability of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).

Duke Energy and some of the Indiana’s key consumer groups on Friday reached a settlement agreement that resolves a disagreement concerning the utility’s consumer-paid cost overruns for its 618-MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant at Edwardsport, Ind. The $3.3 billion coal-fired plant is almost complete and on schedule to begin operations this fall.

The nation’s complex, patchwork system of regional and local power plants, power lines, and transformers is in the worst shape it has ever been, with 70% of transmission lines and power transformers aged more than 25 years, and 60% of the nation’s circuit breakers currently more than 30 years old, suggests new report from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). At least $566 billion will be needed to revitalize the grid through 2020, the group warns.

Small-scale technology tests by the U.S. and Japan in the North Slope of Alaska have extracted a steady flow of natural gas from methane hydrates, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said on Wednesday. If new research efforts to conduct long-term production tests in the Arctic and Gulf Coast are successful, they could unlock a “vast, entirely untapped resource” that would hold significant enormous potential for U.S. energy security, the agency said.

The events that left 2.7 million power customers in Southern California, Arizona, and Baja California in the dark on Sept. 8, 2011, stemmed from operating in an unsecured state due to inadequate planning, a lack of observability, and awareness of system operating conditions on the day of the event, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) concluded in a report released on Tuesday.

Costs for Progress Energy’s two news reactors proposed for Levy County have surged to between $19 and $24 billion, and the first unit could come online almost three years after initially planned, the company said in a statement on Monday. The North Carolina–based company had previously said the first unit at Levy would enter service in 2021 at an estimated cost of $17 billion to $22 billion.

Member states of the European Union (EU) will get a few more months to complete tests on their 147 nuclear power plants, and a final stress test report will be completed this fall—not this summer as initially expected— before any new nuclear safety laws are proposed, EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger said last week.

An agreement reached on Tuesday by Public Service Co. of Oklahoma (PSO) and the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma State, and the Sierra Club will force the American Electric Power (AEP) subsidiary to eventually retire two coal-fired generating units at its Northeastern Station in Oologah, Okla.

About 46% of power company executives in Europe and North America recently surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) predict an increased risk of blackouts up until 2030, citing worries about the affordability and the pace of infrastructure investment, and future energy security.

Coal generation, as a percentage of total power output in the U.S., declined steadily to 39% at the end of 2011 from about 51% in 2002, while generation from natural gas–fired combined cycle plants grew to more than 20% from 10% over the same period, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said on Friday as it released its annual assessment for U.S. energy markets.

The latest in a string of nuclear plants beset by technical troubles is PPL Corp.’s Susquehanna Nuclear Plant in northeastern Pennsylvania. The company said on Tuesday that a follow-up inspection of the Unit 1 main turbine at that two-reactor facility revealed “indications of cracks in blades” that are similar to damage discovered and repaired in 2011.

Activity kicked up in Washington in the past week, where members of the House of Representatives introduced a number of energy bills and passed a key amendment that could give states—not the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—control over coal ash regulation.

The Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) on Wednesday voted 2–1 to approve Mississippi Power’s $2.4 billion integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project proposed for Kemper County, saying it continued to find that the 582-MW project was the “best alternative” to meet the state’s future power demand. The state’s Supreme Court had reversed the PSC’s previous approval of the plant in March, ruling that it did not cite detailed evidence for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Wednesday approved primary contract terms of power purchase agreements (PPAs) for Ocean Renewable Power Co.’s (ORPC’s) 4-MW Maine Tidal Energy Project in Washington County and directed three investor-owned utilities to negotiate 20-year PPAs with ORPC. Those deals could be the first long-term PPAs for tidal energy in the U.S.

During the Clean Energy Ministerial in London over the next few days, the U.S. and the UK will agree to collaborate in the development of floating wind technology designed to generate power in deep waters currently off limits to conventional turbines, but where the wind is much stronger, the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced this week.

PPL Montana on Monday filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to block it from releasing information about its 2,094-MW coal-fired Colstrip power plant to environmental groups that had requested the data via the federal Freedom of Information Act.