POWER Magazine

Dominion Virginia Power will close all its coal ash ponds at power plants in Virginia to comply with standards established by state and federal regulations. The company announced on April 17 that it would close ponds at four locations: Bremo Power Station in Fluvanna County, Chesapeake Energy Center in Chesapeake, Chesterfield Power Station in Chesterfield [...]The post Dominion to Close Virginia Coal Ash Ponds appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Bills to eliminate incentives that have accelerated the expansion of wind power found momentum in Texas and Oklahoma last week. Texas Moves to Nix RPS, CREZ The Texas Senate on April 14 approved, by a 21–10 vote, legislation that would end the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and its Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) program. [...]The post Texas, Okla. Consider Eliminating Wind Incentives appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan is feasible in its ultimate goals, but getting there will take a lot of work and some rethinking of how the targets are achieved, according to speakers at the Environmental Mega Session, Rebalancing the Electric System for Environmental Consideration, at the Electric Power Conference and Exhibition on [...]The post Clean Power Plan Achievable but Challenges Large, Say Experts appeared first on POWER Magazine.

An emergency action proposed by Maryland regulators on Friday will require 14 coal-fired units in the state to minimize nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions every day during the 2015 summer ozone season, starting as soon as May 1. The rule submitted on April 17 by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) to the Joint Committee [...]The post Maryland to Mandate Emergency NOx Reductions at Coal Plants appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The chairman and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) presented conflicting progress reports on the status of Fukushima task force recommendations during a committee oversight hearing held on April 15. “You haven’t done really anything since Fukushima, as far as I can tell,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), [...]The post Fukushima Mitigation Strategies: Is Progress Being Made at U.S. Nuclear Plants? appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A Japanese court has blocked plans to reopen two reactors that had been previously cleared to resume operations by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). Local residents in western Japan’s Fukui Prefecture, where Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear plant is located, successfully petitioned a court to issue an injunction halting plans to restart Units 3 [...]The post Japanese Court Blocks Nuclear Plant Restarts appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and Portland, Ore.­–based utility PacifiCorp announced on April 14 that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the possibility of PacifiCorp joining the ISO as a participating transmission owner. The move would be a big one for both entities. PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), [...]The post CAISO and PacifiCorp to Explore Adding Firm as Transmission Owner appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Electricity generation from existing coal-fired power plants will increase from 2012 levels through 2025, according to the Reference case presented in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2015, released on April 14. In addition to the Reference case, five alternative cases—Low and High Economic Growth cases, Low and High Oil Price cases, and [...]The post EIA: Reports of Coal’s Death May Have Been Greatly Exaggerated appeared first on POWER Magazine.

General Electric’s (GE’s) new flagship HA turbines, which will be the largest and most efficient in their class when deployed, will see their first delivery at EDF’s Bouchain combined cycle plant in France this summer. The first U.S. order, from Exelon for four 7HA turbines intended for expansions at the Wolf Hollow and Colorado Bend [...]The post GE’s New HA Turbines Nearing Delivery appeared first on POWER Magazine.

While fuel switching may be the easiest option for hitting the 2020 and 2030 goals set by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed Clean Power Plan, it may impede reaching longer-term climate targets said experts at an April 8 symposium hosted by the Central Texas Association for Energy Economics and the Energy Institute at the [...]The post Short- and Long-Term Economic Impact of the Clean Power Plan on Texas Debated appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Workers at San Diego’s General Atomics (GA) on April 10 began the years-long process of winding the 1000-ton superconducting electromagnet that will power the ITER fusion reactor under construction in Southern France. The $16 billion ITER project, a consortium of the U.S., the European Union, Russia, China, Japan, and other nations, aims to test reactor-scale [...]The post Fabrication Begins for ITER Fusion Reactor Central Solenoid appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Danish firm DONG Energy will take over RES Americas’ rights to develop more than 1 GW of new offshore wind capacity off the coast of Massachusetts. RES secured the rights to develop one of two leases that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) awarded at its Jan. 29 offshore wind auction. Following approval from [...]The post DONG Energy to Develop 1 GW of Offshore Wind Power in Massachusetts appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should expeditiously complete and implement cybersecurity rulemaking for nuclear fuel-cycle facilities, the regulatory agency’s commissioners have ordered. In a March 24 agency memorandum to Mark Satorius, NRC executive director for operations, the commission disapproved the one option, which was the staff’s recommendation, to issue a security order to [...]The post NRC To Begin Expedited Cybersecurity Rulemaking for Nuclear Fuel-Cycle Facilities appeared first on POWER Magazine.

As it decided in a February case involving American Electric Power (AEP), the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) has denied Duke Energy Ohio’s request to charge ratepayers for power from two aging coal plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corp. (OVEC). In an April 2 order, the state regulator approved the Duke Energy [...]The post Ohio Nixes Duke Energy Proposal to Guarantee Income from Coal Plants appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A Gallup poll completed last month found that only 32% of adults in the U.S. worry a “great deal” about global warming or climate change, while 45% worry “only a little” or “not at all.” The survey was taken via telephone interviews conducted during the first week of March using a random sample of 1,025 [...]The post Poll: Americans Are Not Too Worried About Climate Change, Still Favor Solar, Wind, and Nuclear appeared first on POWER Magazine.

More trouble has been reported at one of the four European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) units currently under construction. AREVA announced on April 7 that chemical and mechanical testing conducted on a reactor vessel head and bottom similar to that of the Flamanville EPR (a 1,630-MW unit under construction on the west coast of the [...]The post Material Inconsistencies Acknowledged in Nuclear Reactor Vessel Head and Bottom appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A dip in voltage prompted temporary power cuts to the White House, Capitol Hill, the State Department, and other parts of Washington, D.C., on Tuesday afternoon. D.C. utility PEPCO said in a statement that the disturbance that affected about 8,000 customers and left a wide swath of the nation’s capital in the dark was caused [...]The post Power Cuts Affect Wide Swath of D.C., Including the White House, Capitol appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Renewable energy development company SunEdison announced on Mar. 25 that it had agreed to purchase up to 1,000 vanadium redox flow batteries totaling more than 100 MW of storage capacity from Imergy Power Systems to be used for community minigrid projects in India. SunEdison, which has an equity stake in Imergy, in January received financing [...]The post SunEdison Procures 100 MW of Storage for Indian Minigrids appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The U.S. will seek to cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025, the White House said on March 31 in a target submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The submission—otherwise referred to as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC)—is a formal statement [...]The post White House Formally Submits Climate Pledge to Slash GHGs appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Copenhagen could inaugurate, as early as 2017, a new combined heat and power plant that features a roof-wide artificial ski slope open to the public and blasts smoke rings through a 124-meter chimney. The $611 million Amager Bakke plant is owned by five Danish municipalities and is being built by the Copenhagen-based waste management company Amager [...]The post A Smoke-Ring Blowing Power Plant. April Fools? You Tell Us. appeared first on POWER Magazine.

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The balance in the Zion Nuclear Power Plant decommissioning trust fund was about 30% lower at the end of 2014 than it was the previous year according to a report filed by ZionSolutions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 30. The Report on Status of Decommissioning Funding for Shutdown Reactors—due annually—indicated that there was [...]The post Zion Nuclear Plant Decommissioning Trust Fund Depleting Quickly appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Argentina’s Ministry of Federal Planning in early February signed an agreement with the National Energy Administration of China and China National Nuclear Co. (CNNC) to build Argentina’s fourth nuclear reactor, an 800-MW CANDU design, on the site of the existing Atucha nuclear power plant. Under the agreement, Nucleoeléctrica Argentina—holder of the rights to Canadian CANDU [...]The post China’s Hualong One Reactor Design Gets Argentine Boost appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Stacking perovskites, a crystalline material, onto a conventional silicon solar cell may dramatically improve the overall efficiency of the cell, scientists from Stanford University concluded in a new study. “Right now, silicon solar cells dominate the world market, but the power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has been stuck at 25% for 15 years,” explained [...]The post Study: Perovskite-Silicon Tandems Provide Big Boost to Solar Efficiency appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Though offshore wind is becoming increasingly important in Europe, with many hundreds-of-megawatts projects in service, the sector has stagnated in the U.S., with no operational facilities—and someThe post One Step Back, One Step Forward for U.S. Offshore Wind appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station led the U.S. in electrical generation in 2014, as it has done for 23 consecutive years, with a total output of 32.3 million MWh. That bested its previous record set in 2012. The Palo Verde plant is located about 45 miles west of Phoenix, Ariz. (Figure 5). It has [...]The post Palo Verde Nuclear Station Sets U.S. Production Record appeared first on POWER Magazine.

In South Korea, the second unit at Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power’s (KHNP’s) Shin-Wolsong reactor (Figure 3) was finally connected to the grid in late February. 3. Finally connected. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power’s Shin-Wolsong 2 was grid-connected in late February, nearly two years after it was completed. Courtesy: KHNP Though the reactor was completed [...]The post Two Years Later, S. Korea Finally Puts Shin-Wolsong 2 Online appeared first on POWER Magazine.

As this month marks the compliance date for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), it’s a good time to take a step back from the many months of concern and consideration of options to see how coal-fired power plants are actually responding to the new rule. It’s also a good time to acknowledge that [...]The post The State of U.S. Mercury Control in Response to MATS appeared first on POWER Magazine.

It’s been called “filling the duck pond,” and it’s the increasingly common challenge worldwide of balancing supply and demand when variable renewables are not feeding power to the grid. Gas-fired generation is often filling the pond, but the technology mix matters. The growing portfolio of renewable power generation around the world has made the selection [...]The post Are Simple Cycles or Combined Cycles Better for Renewable Power Integration? appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Since the beginning of the U.S. commercial reactor industry, regulatory agencies have required that nuclear power plant designs take into account the potential threats posed by natural hazards such as earthquakes and floods. The tsunami-caused disaster in Japan in 2011 prompted renewed attention worldwide on these hazards. Given the devastation caused at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi [...]The post Seismic Hazard Resiliency at U.S. Nuclear Power Plants appeared first on POWER Magazine.

NextEra Energy consists of a traditional, vertically integrated electric utility with a heavy reliance on nuclear and natural gas—Florida Power & Light—and an aggressive foray into renewable energy outside of Florida—NextEra Energy Resources. Given its recent bid for Hawaii’s electric utility, which has a legacy of oil-fired generation and a state commission pushing renewables, NextEra [...]The post NextEra Energy: A Tale of Two, and Maybe Three, Companies appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its approval to two deals that will see shifts in electricity markets in Hawaii and the Midwest. On Mar. 27, FERC approved Duke Energy’s proposed sale of its merchant generation business to Dynegy for $2.8 billion. The deal, announced last August, covers 11 power plants in the Midwest [...]The post FERC Okays NextEra-HEI, Duke-Dynegy Deals appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Plant officials from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) Watts Bar nuclear facility said during a senior management meeting presentation that Unit 2—currently under construction—is expected to reach commercial operations on Dec. 13, 2015. Assuming it does, the unit will be the first nuclear reactor added to the U.S. fleet since Watts Bar Unit 1 was [...]The post First New Nuclear Unit in U.S. in Nearly 20 Years Is on Track to Begin Operating in 2015 appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Department of the Army for Civil Works announced on March 24 that the three agencies would continue to collaborate on hydropower development for at least another five years. The agreement extends a memorandum of understanding (MOU) the three agencies originally signed in [...]The post Government Agencies Continue Partnership to Advance Hydropower Technology appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Adds Moniz’s March 25 comments on the future of the nation’s nuclear waste beyond Yucca Mountain. As four bipartisan U.S. senators unveiled a bill that tasks a new independent agency with permanent disposal of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday outlined steps the agency would take to [...]The post UPDATED: DOE and Senators Separately Outline Steps to Manage U.S. Nuclear Waste appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Numerous announcements of plant closures during the past week are painting a grim picture for the future of the coal industry. On March 20, several news outlets reported that American Electric Power (AEP) had sent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, notices to workers at half a dozen coal-fired plants. Employees at the [...]The post Industry in Turmoil: Coal Plants Shutting Down Around the World appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The ongoing record drought in California has caused significant changes in the state’s power mix as water available for hydroelectric generation becomes increasingly scarce, according to a recent report from Oakland-based nonprofit the Pacific Institute. The California Independent System Operator warned last year that water shortages were likely to substantially impact the state’s generation, with [...]The post Drought Continues to Challenge California Grid appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Four Japanese utilities last week announced that they would retire five older reactors rather than implement strict and expensive safety requirements mandated by new nuclear regulations. Kansai Electric Power Co. on March 17 said it will close two reactors (340 MW and 500 MW) at its Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture. On the same [...]The post Japanese Utilities to Retire Five Nuclear Reactors appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Several gigawatts of solar energy faded from European grids during the two-hour solar eclipse that shadowed the continent, as well as parts of Northern Africa and Asia, on Friday morning. But according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E)—an organization representing 41 transmission system operators (TSOs) from 34 European countries—grid operators [...]The post Total Solar Eclipse “Blacks Out” Europe appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The consortium behind the Nordlink high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) link between Germany and Norway on Mar. 19 awarded the construction contract for the project to Swiss firm ABB. The $2 billion, 525-kV transmission line will be, at 623 kilometers (km), the longest HVDC connection in Europe. It will transit the North Sea across the Skagerrak strait, [...]The post Nordlink Consortium Chooses ABB appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Cyberattacks on Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power’s (KHNP’s) computer systems last December were committed by a group of North Korean hackers, an interim South Korean investigation has concluded. The Seoul central prosecutors office said in a March 16 statement that the malicious codes used for the nuclear operator hacking were “the same in composition and [...]The post S. Korea Points to N. Korea for Nuclear Plant Hacking appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from the energy sector were unchanged from the preceding year—marking the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases that was not associated to an economic downturn, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said. The Paris-based autonomous organization said in a [...]The post IEA: For First Time in 40 Years, World Energy Sector GHG Emissions Stalled in 2014 appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The reliability support service agreement (RSSA) that would rescue the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in western New York from an early retirement has come under fire from a group of about 60 large electricity customers—industrial, institutional, and commercial entities—who on Mar. 6 asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reject the proposed deal, [...]The post Ginna Reliability Deal Draws Fire appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC) in Sharm El-Sheikh resulted in some big agreements for the Egyptian government including a reported $10.5 billion deal with Siemens and a $1.7 billion order with GE. The conference was held March 13–15, 2015, and was purported to be a key milestone of the government’s medium term economic development [...]The post Siemens and GE Ink Big Orders with Egypt appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Delays and other contested costs are expected to push the price for two new units being constructed at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station up by $980 million, a petition freshly filed by South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) with the Public Service Commission of South Carolina (SCPSC) shows. SCE&G made the filing to [...]The post V.C. Summer Nuclear Expansion Costs to Surge by Nearly $1B appeared first on POWER Magazine.