POWERnews

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday offered a $350 million conditional loan guarantee to develop the One Nevada Transmission Line (ON Line), a proposed 500-kV link that will run 235 miles and transmit 600 MW of mostly renewable energy. The project is the first transmission line to receive a federal loan guarantee.

A new $5 billion transmission project proposed by Trans-Elect and sponsored by Google, Good Energies, and Marubeni Corp. seeks to connect 6,000 MW from wind farms installed up to 20 miles off the Mid-Atlantic coast to the national grid.

Constellation Energy last week offered to sell its 50% stake in the UniStar joint venture to partner Électricité de France (EDF) for $1, plus $117 million in reimbursement costs—a price well below market value—in order to further the project and ensure future energy supplies for Maryland.

Nebraska-based Tenaska on Monday said it would sell a portion of interests in five power plants to Japanese energy firms Tyr Energy and Chubu Electric.

Solar installations in the U.S.—both photovoltaic and concentrating solar power (CSP) installations—grew 114% in 2009, and by the year’s end, they could surpass 1 GW, a new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week proposed requiring the Four Corners Power Plant near Farmington, N.M., to install and operate selective catalytic reduction (SCR) controls on all five of the 2,040-MW coal-fired facility’s units. The measure would cut the plant’s nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate matter emissions by nearly 80%, the agency said.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a notice of violation to Portland Gas and Electric (PGE), alleging that the company’s coal-fired Boardman facility in Oregon violated the Clean Air Act, including New Source Performance Standards and operating permit requirements.

The Department of Energy (DOE) last week announced a conditional commitment to provide a partial guarantee for a $1.3 billion loan to the Caithness Shepherds Flat wind project, an 845-MW wind farm planned for eastern Oregon that it is calling “the world’s largest wind farm.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an arm of the Commerce Department designated by Congress to coordinate development of communication protocols, last week told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) it had identified five “foundational” sets of standards for smart grid interoperability and cybersecurity.

Constellation Energy last week rejected a $7.5 billion conditional loan guarantee offer from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a new reactor at its Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland with partner Électricité de France (EDF), saying the government’s proposed terms and conditions were “unworkable.”

Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy last week called for an evaluation of “alternative solutions” to execute a large-scale carbon capture plant whose construction is under way at the Mongstad refinery on the country’s western coast, after “theoretical studies” indicated health and environmental risks related to amine technology.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reversed a May 2008 jury verdict finding that Cinergy Corp.—which merged with Duke Energy in 2006—violated New Source Review provisions of the Clean Air Act when it performed certain work on its coal-fired boiler units at several of its Indiana facilities without first obtaining a permit. The ruling allows Duke Energy to restart three Indiana coal-fired units that it had been ordered to shut down.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) last week issued an air quality permit to the White Stallion Energy Center, a 1,320-MW coal- and petroleum coke–fired power plant proposed for construction in Bay City, Texas.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has introduced the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2010 (S. 20), which would require utilities to obtain 20% of their energy from “clean energy” sources by 2020, with the requirement rising by 5% every five years through 2050.

U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee Ranking Member Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) on Monday introduced a comprehensive package of advanced energy tax incentives for clean renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon mitigation.

U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday approved the first large-scale solar energy plants ever to be built on U.S. public lands, and today he signed the nation’s first lease for commercial wind energy development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

UK energy regulator Ofgem on Monday warned that the country would need to rewire in a smarter way to secure access to renewable plants, but that an investment of £32 billion ($50.8 billion) would be needed to overhaul the aging grid, including replacing old “pipes and wires.”

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has awarded French company AREVA an engineering and development contract to work on potential completion of the 1,200-MW Unit 1 at the Bellefonte nuclear power plant in northern Alabama.

Computers at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor and around the country have reportedly been infected by the Stuxnet worm, a sophisticated malware that attacks supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems at power plants, factories, and military installations.

Electric grid cybersecurity in the U.S. was revved up in the past week as the Energy Department announced investments of more than $30 million in 10 solution-seeking projects. At the same time, the DOE selected an Electric Power Research Institute- (EPRI-) led collaborative to assess and develop technologies and standards to protect the nation against cyber attacks.

Regulators at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) unanimously voted to increase that state’s renewable electricity standard (RES) to 33% by 2020 last week. The regulation applies to all entities that deliver power, including publicly owned utilities and investor-owned utilities.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) last week approved BrightSource Energy’s 370-MW Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System proposed for construction in the Mojave Desert. The project is the fourth solar thermal power plant approved in the past month despite presenting “significant environmental challenges,” the commission said.

American Electric Power and Allegheny Energy last week said they filed a new application with the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) to build the Virginia segment of the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH).

A wave energy device was connected to the grid for the first time in the U.S. this week. Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) hooked up its PowerBuoy system, a device that had been deployed in December 2009 in waters 100 feet deep and nearly three-quarters of a mile off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii.

The Energy Department on Tuesday said it had signed a final cooperative agreement with the FutureGen Industrial Alliance and Ameren Energy Resources, formally committing $1 billion in Recovery Act funding to build the revamped FutureGen project.

Whether you are a customer (and we all are), a utility executive, a power plant manager, or a grid operator, the smart grid has the potential to provide benefits beyond electricity. That was one theme of the presentations on Tuesday, the first day of the GridWise Global Forum (GGF) in Washington, D.C.

South Africa’s government on Thursday announced it would no longer invest in the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project, despite providing nearly 80% of the R9.2 billion ($1.3 billion) that has been poured into development of the Generation-IV helium-cooled high temperature reactor design. The decision was reached with the “fiscal constraints in these hard economic times” in mind, the government said.

The week brought important news from Washington on energy- and climate change–related legislation. Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) introduced a bill to create a federal renewable electricity standard, the White House said it had received permitting guidance on greenhouse gases from the Environmental Protection Agency, and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) reportedly canceled a key vote on a bill that sought to curb power plant emissions.

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative (MITEI) concludes that uranium supplies will not limit growth of the nuclear industry, contrary to a view that has prevailed for decades.

Costs passed onto consumers associated with the construction of Duke Energy Indiana’s Edwardsport coal gasification plant near Vincennes, Ind., will be capped at $2.975 billion, according to a settlement agreement reached last week between the utility, the Indiana Office of the Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC), and Nucor Steel Indiana.