Cheap natural gas is not just hurting coal. It’s doing the same to nuclear.
As anyone knows who works in the energy industry, changes are coming in the way we generate, distribute, and use electricity.
From New York to California to Hawaii, lawmakers are calling for more renewable energy. They're welcoming new technologies into grid systems for energy management. They're encouraging formerly monopolistic and slow-moving utilities to reinvent themselves - as smart and nimble player-coaches in a newly dynamic and pluralistic energy marketplace.
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
That's the lesson one might well draw from the remarkable but yet not so surprising coincidences that have emerged regarding (A) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its "Clean Power Plan" to reduce carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants, and (B) an academic study released two months ago by some half-dozen PH.D's from Harvard, Syracuse University, and other schools and NGOs that purports to justify the CPP.
TerraForm Power signed a definitive agreement to acquire net ownership of 930-MW of wind power plants from Invenergy Wind (Invenergy). TerraForm Power intends to acquire net ownership of 460 MW of the wind power plants from Invenergy with the remaining 470 MW to be acquired by a new warehouse facility, for a combined $2.0 billion in aggregate consideration. Invenergy will retain a 9.9 percent stake in the U.S. assets and will provide certain operation and maintenance services for these power plants.
Booz Allen Hamilton, Siemens and Power Analytics will study the technical and economic feasibility of installing community microgrids in 16 cities across New York. These communities were each awarded $100,000 in initial microgrid funding through New York State's NY Prize competition in order to evaluate how microgrids local energy networks that are able to separate from the larger electrical grid can expand customer choice, ensure power reliability, improve resiliency and preserve the environment.
Williams’ Transco filed an application with FERC for the New York Bay Expansion Project to deliver additional natural gas to New York City in time for the 2017/2018 heating season. The New York Bay Expansion is designed to deliver an additional 115,000 dekatherms a day of natural gas into National Grid's distribution system through the Rockaway Delivery Lateral and the Narrows meter station.
Senior executives from Exelon Generation, Alstom, General Electric and Zachry officially broke ground on the construction of a new low-carbon, combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) at Exelon's Colorado Bend Generating Station in Wharton. The new CCGT will provide an additional 1,000 MW to the existing 498-MW natural gas power plant. The new unit at Colorado Bend is one of two new CCGTs the company is developing in Texas.
The New York Power Authority and mPrest, an Israeli software development firm, were awarded a $900,000 grant from the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation to develop a system that can rapidly detect malfunctioning power transformers before they cause larger problems on the electric grid. NYPA and mPrest will develop software for deployment on the NYPA transmission system, and plan to engage the Electric Power Research Institute for research assistance.
Siemens partnered with Con Edison to install technology that will help keep Con Edison customers in sections of Lower Manhattan in service during severe flooding. Con Edison chose a new automation system to synchronously control underground switches and circuit breakers that will separate two of Con Edison's power distribution networks into four sub-networks. Siemens developed the distribution feeder automation (SDFA) technology specifically for Con Edison's system.