Reliability

Loan Guarantees For Nuclear Plants Evaporate

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Federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power will be increasingly difficult to obtain, the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute says, limiting development of new plants over the next decade to those states that permit costs to be passed through directly to customers.

The four to eight new nuclear power plants planned for the 2016-2020 time frame will go forward, NEI president and CEO Marv Fertel told Breaking Energy, but development of the “hundreds” of new facilities required to replace retiring units and power growing electricity demand will be delayed to the 2020-2050 period. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 28, 2011 at 1:45 PM

Its Official: Heat Wave Drove Record Demand

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Power transmission systems in 25 states plus the District of Columbia saw record-high electricity demand during last week’s heat wave while demand in New England hit its second-highest level ever, regional transmission organizations said.

The record demand surge was reported by PJM Interconnection, serving 13 mid-Atlantic and southern states, and by MISO, which covers 12 Midwestern states plus the Canadian province of Manitoba. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 27, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Distributed CCHP And Blackouts

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The heat index in NYC reached 106 degrees on Thursday, July 21st and climbed into Friday and the weekend.

According to news reports, Con-Edison started calling clients to cut back on electric usage and maintain the load at a lower level to avoid brown-outs and black-outs. Distributed power generation can help manage power loads for utilities and provide security for large industrial and commercial customers. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 25, 2011 at 3:00 PM

AOL Energy Week In Review

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Summer’s heat built across the week and across the country, spiking consumption of electricity as consumers ramped up their electricity and providing the first real test of the year for the aging US transmission grid and utilities’ demand response systems.

Surging power demand strained the transmission grid but as of Friday afternoon but did not break it, as both traditional and innovative programs designed to forecast and reduce usage spikes were put in place. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 22, 2011 at 4:00 PM

Looking To Past, Future For Heat Beating Methods

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Electric utilities and consumers are getting creative in their efforts to cut back electricity use as it spikes in response to an all-consuming heat wave that has spread across the country to settle across the heavily-populated Northeastern states.

Demand response programs, in which companies and consumers are asked to cut back on electricity use through established mechanisms like turning off extraneous lights or limiting elevator service, have already been in effect as the Northeast dealt with spiking power demand on July 21. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 22, 2011 at 11:45 AM

Managing The Air Conditioned Nightmare

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As temperatures soar this summer and customers turn up air conditioning units, utilities are working to raise awareness about saving power through demand response programs and smart meters.

In this video, Duke Energy–which serves North and South Carolina as well as parts of the Midwest–uses cartoon imagery to illustrate how it is incorporating renewable to handle peak demands, how demand response (residential energy management systems) helps the utility quickly shed load, and how intelligent sensors and communication nodes on transmission lines help the grid be smarter and use energy more efficiently. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 22, 2011 at 6:00 AM

A Google Earth Smart Grid

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Managing a sprawling electric grid can be costly and wasteful.

To better manage data points over its large geographic service area, the California Independent System Operator –which manages about 85% of California’s electricity–has installed an 80 by 6.5 inch screen in its control room that combines four information sources, overlaid on a Google Earth map, to display real-time information on where transmission lines are located and how and where electricity is being used. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 21, 2011 at 5:00 PM

New York Survives 4PM

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The New York state electricity system operator spent the day on customers to reduce load across the afternoon as it prepared to reach a peak of 34,100MW shortly after 4pm. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 21, 2011 at 2:30 PM

Heat Is On For Electricity Sector

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The heat isn’t over yet, particularly for power companies handling the first serious and widespread test of electricity generating marginal capacity of summer 2011.

The Southern and Midwestern parts of the US were still under the most severe temperature forecasts in the middle of the week, but temperatures north of 100 degrees Fahrenheit are set to sweep across the heavily populated Northeastern states on Thursday and Friday. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 20, 2011 at 4:30 PM

Fukushima Task Force Urges Coherent Nuke Rules

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Fukushima gives US nuclear regulators a golden opportunity to tie up decades of regulatory loose ends and replace the “patchwork” of regulations that has evolved since the 1960s with a “logical, systematic and coherent regulatory framework,” a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff task force says.

But the industry’s Nuclear Energy Institute quickly faulted the task force for failing to analyze in detail what went wrong at the Japanese nuclear station. NEI warned that rash actions, taken before the accident is fully understood, might harm US plant safety. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 20, 2011 at 3:00 PM
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