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ENGIE, Microsoft Seal Innovative ‘Firm Power’ PPA for 230 MW Wind and Solar in Texas

September 26, 2019

The post ENGIE, Microsoft Seal Innovative ‘Firm Power’ PPA for 230 MW Wind and Solar in Texas appeared first on POWER Magazine.

ENGIE, the world’s largest independent power producer, has signed an innovative volume firming agreement (VMA) with Microsoft that will allow the technology giant to buy “firm” power from wind and solar projects in Texas under a specially structured power purchase agreement (PPA).

The companies on Sept. 24 said the long-term PPA will allow Microsoft to buy a total of 230 MW that ENGIE plans to put online in January 2021 on a fixed, 24/7 basis, to match hourly consumption from a Microsoft data center in Texas. The majority of output will come from the 200-MW Las Lomas wind project in Starr and Zapata Counties in south Texas, but Microsoft will also buy 85 MW from the 200-MW Anson Solar Center project in Jones County, central Texas.

ENGIE and Microsoft on Tuesday also announced a partnership to integrate Microsoft Azure intelligent cloud services with ENGIE’s Darwin energy software to optimize performance of ENGIE’s wind, solar, and wind + solar hybrid assets worldwide.…

The POWER Interview: SEPA’s Julia Hamm Talks Solar Pathways

September 24, 2019

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The post The POWER Interview: SEPA’s Julia Hamm Talks Solar Pathways appeared first on POWER Magazine.

The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) is meeting this week in Salt Lake City, Utah, joining with the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) to present North America Smart Energy Week, which this year includes both the long-running Solar Power International gathering along with Energy Storage International.

A big theme this week is the integration of solar with storage. Climate change also is a topic of discussion, as solar and storage advocates tout the benefits of carbon-free power generation and their roles in crafting legislation and regulations designed to help meet clean energy targets.

Julia Hamm, CEO of the Smart Electric Power Alliance. Courtesy: Smart Electric Power Alliance

Julia Hamm, president and CEO of SEPA, sat down with POWER on Sept. 23 at the show to discuss how her group has evolved, and to talk about the changing power generation landscape. Hamm has been with the group for 20 years, starting in 1999 when it was known as the Utility PhotoVoltaic Group (UPVG) before becoming the Solar Electric Power Association (version 1.0 of the SEPA acronym) in 2000.…

Texas’ Impending Reliability Issues With Wind Power

September 20, 2019

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The post Texas’ Impending Reliability Issues With Wind Power appeared first on POWER Magazine.

COMMENTARY

Texas has the most wind capacity of any state, generating about 16% of its electricity from wind. In August, as temperatures rose above 100F and consumers increased their use of air conditioning, Texas’ grid operators struggled to meet the record demand for electricity.

Many of the wind turbines could not operate because the wind was stagnant, a common occurrence on very hot days. As a result, energy costs skyrocketed. In Houston, wholesale power prices spiked 49,000% (to $ 9,000 per megawatt-hour). The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) warned that reserve margins were so low that it might have to institute rolling blackouts, or controlled interruptions of power service. The independent system operator called for the construction of more gas-fired generating plants.

Mary J. Hutzler

Facing a second consecutive year of strain on its grid, ERCOT mandated all available power plants to run flat-out, called on factories to cut power consumption, and imported electricity from Mexico.…

Vistra Will Close Another Illinois Coal Plant

September 18, 2019

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The post Vistra Will Close Another Illinois Coal Plant appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A Vistra Energy subsidiary on Sept. 16 said it will close the nearly 60-year-old E.D. Edwards coal-fired plant in Bartonville, Illinois, by year-end 2022 under a settlement between the company and environmental groups the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Respiratory Health Association. The groups made a joint announcement Monday of the agreement.

The environmental groups had sued in 2013 in an attempt to force the plant to adhere to emissions regulations. Vistra, in its second-quarter 2019 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, said a bench trial in the case had been scheduled for the end of September. “We dispute the allegations and will defend the case vigorously,” the company said in the SEC filing earlier this year, prior to the settlement.

Vistra’s Illinois power-generation unit—Illinois Power Resources Generating (IPRG), an affiliate of Vistra-owned Luminant—in a statement Monday said: “The proposed settlement resolves a long-running lawsuit while providing three years of certainty for the more than 70 employees working at the Edwards plant and, importantly, a transition period for the community to plan for the plant closure.…

What Can You Do with a Superconductor? A Lot! [PODCAST]

September 16, 2019

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The post What Can You Do with a Superconductor? A Lot! [PODCAST] appeared first on POWER Magazine.

What is a superconductor? One definition says, “a material that can conduct electricity or transport electrons from one atom to another with no resistance.”

“At the base physics level, what a superconductor does is it moves a lot more power per unit volume or per unit weight, so you have a very high energy-dense material that can move lots of power,” Daniel McGahn, CEO of American Superconductor (AMSC), explained as a guest on The POWER Podcast. “So, from a very simple standpoint, we can move transmission-level power at distribution voltage simply with the energy density.”

AMSC is a global energy solutions provider serving both the power grid and wind industries. “Everything we do revolves around resiliency—either of the grid, infrastructure, or of Navy ships,” McGahn said.

“We do a lot of grid interconnection of wind to the grid. We do voltage support within the grid.…

IHS: Natural Gas Prices Will Fall Below $2/MMBtu in 2020

September 14, 2019

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Average natural gas prices at Henry Hub in 2020 could fall to below $ 2/MMBtu —a level “not seen in decades”—owing to a persistent oversupply, a new report from information and analytics firm IHS Markit suggests.

Prices could fall despite strong demand for natural gas, both domestically, including for power generation, as well as for exports. Demand for gas has increased 14 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) annually on average over the past two years, and the U.S. is expected to export an additional 3 Bcf/d of liquified natural gas (LNG) in 2020. IHS forecasts that nearly all growth in U.S. natural gas demand over the next few years will come from LNG exports to other countries.

Production, however, has grown by more than 14 Bcf/d since January 2018, and IHS Markit expects production will average more than 90 Bcf/d in 2019 and 2020.…