EPA’s new water, waste, and air regulations complicate power plant compliance.
New environmental requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA) will add to the already complex burden of compliance for power plants. As the Environmental Protection Agency moves forward with cooling water and effluent standards, utilities and generators will have to deal with overlapping rules and conflicting policy goals.
IT systems ease the pain of power plant restarts.
Squeezing plant outage duration by days or even weeks can save the industry billions of dollars in lost running time. The San Onofre outage is just the most visible example of what’s at stake for the industry. New outage management technologies and processes allow generators to coordinate outages and get critical plants back online quickly and efficiently.
(July 2012) NRC renews Entergy Pilgrim nuclear license. San Francisco selects EnerNOC. Entergy contracts with Comverge. FPL adds Quantum Ford F-150 PHEVs to its fleet. Lincoln Renewable Energy dedicates 12.5-MW NJ Oak solar project.
(July 2012)
Utilities sound the alarm as PV nears grid parity.
A growing wave of rooftop PV projects is starting to look ominous to some utilities. Will lawmakers accept utilities’ warnings at face value—or will they suspect they’re crying wolf?
Rising expectations in the Dog Days of summer.
Yet another sweltering summer is causing its share of outages and supply problems, with predictable backlash from customers and policy makers. And with the advances we’ve seen in recent years, perhaps again we should be asking whether we’re adequately focused on our most critical mission: keeping the power on.
El Paso Electric announced that Thomas V. Shockley was appointed the company’s permanent CEO. Hector R. Puente was promoted to senior v.p. and COO. Duke Energy named Clark Gillespy president of the company’s South Carolina service region. Gillespy replaces Catherine Heigel who became vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at American Transmission Co. Ameren promoted Richard J. Mark to chairman, president, and CEO of Ameren Illinois. And others...
(August 2012)
Policymakers and industry seek a formula to assure competitiveness and resource adequacy.
New Jersey’s bid to force prices downward in PJM’s capacity market not only raises the alarm about market manipulation. It also reveals a dilemma that’s preventing new generation from being built. Incumbent interests and political motivations make PJM less attractive to investment than it should be.
Why Idaho is fed up with renewables.
Idaho Power has more wind power than it can use—so much that it’s costing its ratepayers a bundle. It wants out, so it won’t have to buy from all the small wind farms that claim “QF” status under the 1978 PURPA law.