By Jacinta Moran | May 9, 2013 07:16 PM Comments (0)
Nigeria is expecting an annual investment of about $10 billion after the complete privatization of its power sector over the next 10 years, a move that could usher in a new era of uninterrupted power supply.
Nigerians are among the people most deprived of grid-based electricity in the world with a per capita consumption that is far lower than many other African countries.
By Martin Coyne | May 7, 2013 03:07 PM Comments (0)
The California power supply may be stretched to its limits this summer.
It all started with the indefinite loss of the 2,250-MW San Onofre nuclear plant nearly 18 months ago. The plant went and remains offline because of premature wear on reactor steam tubes at both units. The loss of such a large asset to a state-wide or regional power system is the kind of worst-case scenario that grid operators plan for on a short-term basis.
On top of that, it’s barely snowed in the mountains whose spring runoff supplies much of the “fuel” for the state’s hydropower. In the 2013 summer assessment released Monday by the California independent system operator, Cal-ISO, the report said that “snowpack water content on May 2, was 17% of average statewide for that date, 16% for northern portions, 23% for central California and 9% for the southern region.” As a result of that, the ISO projection assumes a 1,022-MW “derating” on the hydro resources in the ISO system. And the report also noted that, not surprisingly, the drop could be bigger if the summer is hotter and dryer than normal.
By Peter Maloney | April 25, 2013 12:10 PM Comments (4)
David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy, knows how to get an audience’s attention.
“Solar and wind are going to part ways,” he said at a recent conference, which is interesting coming from the head of a company that has 450 MW of wind power and grown into the largest developer of solar projects in the US with 2,000 MW of distributed and utility scale solar projects under way.
But what does that actually mean?
By Jeff Ryser | April 19, 2013 04:02 PM Comments (0)
Renewable electricity generation, much of it heavily subsidized, has made significant inroads in certain places that are simultaneously experiencing record low wholesale power prices. Is there a connection between build-up and price?
The answer to that seems to depend on how large the build-up is, and on the fuel mix of the overall generating portfolio.
By Tim Worledge | April 16, 2013 03:19 PM Comments (3)
Ancient, historic, glorious Venice became the latest European location to lob a brick into the spokes of diesel’s dominance across the continent, with a stage-managed, short-lived but thought-provoking ban on all powered vessels using the legendary Grand Canal. Is Europe’s most romantic city signaling the beginning of the end for Europe’s diesel love affair? Read the rest of this entry »
By Kathy Larsen | March 21, 2013 08:24 AM Comments (0)
The president’s annual State of the Union Address customarily declares that “the state of the union is good.” Likewise, the State of the Market in the PJM Interconnection power market is annually deemed good (“competitive” is the operative word.) It’s competitive, to some extent only because of all the “mitigation,” the adjustments that PJM makes to make to make it work.
The idea would be ridiculous in just about any other sector (though not in completely made-up markets like those for carbon and renewable energy credits), but it’s seemingly inherent in electricity.
By Katharine Fraser | March 7, 2013 03:57 PM Comments (0)
As Texas approaches summer heat, a searing debate in the electricity industry was on display Thursday at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston over whether the state’s deregulated power market should add a capacity market, which compensates generators for the investment of putting nameplate capacity in the ground – and keeping it online — beyond the payments they would see for providing megawatts of energy.
The chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, Donna Nelson, would not be pinned down on which side of the issue she may ultimately vote, but she urges a thorough, honest evaluation of the pros and cons of both an energy-only market (payment for power provided at wholesale) and capacity markets (adding payments for capacity provisions).
For an energy-only market to be true in spirit to a free market, it would lack price caps and could function with an 8% reserve margin, she told reporters. Nelson also said she did not think capacity markets need add as much in costs as some have projected.
By Kathy Larsen | January 22, 2013 05:43 PM Comments (1)
On Tuesday, MidAmerican Energy said it would stop burning coal at five generating units in Iowa by 2016. Its settlement with the Sierra Club affects about 673 MW of capacity.
The announcement came a day after President Barack Obama devoted a surprisingly big part of his inaugural speech to the subject of climate change. It is unknown just what his administration will actually do about it. Read the rest of this entry »
By Peter Maloney | December 10, 2012 08:26 AM Comments (0)
If everything equipment makers said about technological breakthroughs were true, we’d all be living with The Jetsons.
But every once in a while a pitch grabs an editor’s attention. ABB’s claim that it had solved a “100-year-old electrical riddle” is a good example.
The Swiss company says it has developed the “world’s first” circuit breaker for high-voltage direct current and that its hybrid HVDC breaker can interrupt power flows “equivalent to the output of a large power station within 5 milliseconds,” about 60 to 80 times far faster than the blink of an eye.
By Derek Sands | December 6, 2012 02:36 PM Comments (3)
Making buildings, air conditioners and refrigerators run better and use less energy does not attract the kind of attention that comes with seismic shifts in the natural gas market or fights over OPEC oil-production ceilings. But according to a high-thinking panel of experts that advise the US energy secretary, serious money is making the conversation around efficiency more interesting.
Ever since coming to DOE in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been singing the praises of energy efficiency, entertaining audiences with PowerPoint presentations on how refrigerator standards have reduced energy use while at the same time bringing down costs.
But even after raft of new appliance standards over the past four years, and a push to tighten enforcement, energy efficiency still has a way to go, according to Chu.
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