It starts with a ‘C’ and ends with an ‘L.’
Coal may have become the dirtiest word in the energy industry last week when American Electric Power (AEP) finally caved to continued Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation pressures and announced that it would “prematurely” retire nearly 6,000 MW of coal generated electricity by the end of 2014. Keep reading →
Nuclear power regulators are rethinking their approach to safety after recent data releases showed that post-9/11 measures were often insufficient.
Implementing a “safety culture” of constant measurement and improvement has been central to the industry’s safety progress since the now minor-seeming accident at Three Mile Island, which resulted in a rule-making binge. Keep reading →
Big lessons can come from small places.
In 2009, the IT giant IBM agreed to transform the utility operations of a small Mediterranean island country, Malta, by implementing a national smart grid system for water and electrical use. Keep reading →
The massive floods in the Midwest in the past month have been devastating in many ways, but one thing Midwesterners won’t have to worry about is generating electricity from their coal-fired power plants. Inventories at plants along the river are high, limiting the impact from potential interuptions to barging down the river from coal producing states like West Virginia and Indiana to coal consuming states like Kentucky and Tennessee. Keep reading →
Customers are mostly ignoring it. Utilities are largely drowning in it. Technology firms are trying to parse it.
Electricity usage data lies at the heart of efforts to remake the US energy sector, and smart meters that enable more-detailed usage data production are actually a challenge for both the customers trying to understand their power bills and can complicate the efforts of generators accustomed to blunt tools when managing complex and delicate generation infrastructure. Keep reading →
In energy, government can mean business.
Public policy is paramount in creating new markets and new business models within the energy sector, according to a former chief of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Keep reading →
New terms are always emerging in the energy business. With GE‘s recent deployment of eight Aero LMS100 turbine-generators in a California natural gas plant intended to act as a partner to renewables by ramping up and down extremely quickly, “wind firming” is the latest term that has emerged in the generation business.
The CPV Sentinel’s eight turbines can reach peak capacity in 10 minutes and are therefore part of “wind firming” because they provide a back-up system for intermittent generation sources such as wind and solar. Keep reading →
T. Boone Pickens is on a crusade to wean America off its addiction to foreign oil. The famed oilman and corporate takeover artist has been crisscrossing the country pushing the Pickens Plan, which proposes converting heavy vehicles to run on abundant and domestically available natural gas.
The plan is not uncontroversial, particularly amongst some in the green community who note that it is based on controversial extraction techniques and that Pickens, an oil and gas investor, stands to profit handsomely if it is enacted. But the plan, which inspired a bill in the U.S. Congress called the Nat Gas Act, also has influential supporters in Washington and at The New York Times. We caught up with Pickens a couple of weeks ago. The interview was condensed and edited for clarity. Keep reading →
How much data is too much data?
Utilities and cities are struggling, alongside private companies, to find effective ways to filter and organize, at speed and with efficiency, the enormous amounts of data new communication devices throughout the energy origination, production and delivery systems emit. IBM may have found a way to solve the problem. Keep reading →
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
When this video was filmed, most of the US power grid was already more than 50 years old, and concerns about technological innovation and investment levels in the electricity sector were intensifying. Keep reading →
