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Digital Applications, Data, and the Microgrid User Experience

October 19, 2020

The post Digital Applications, Data, and the Microgrid User Experience appeared first on POWER Magazine.

EnTech Solutions, a sister company of Faith Technologies, was created to provide renewable, resilient energy solutions that enable its partners to control energy costs and reliability and minimize their environmental impact. EnTech utilizes microgrids that leverage proprietary power control hardware, energy management software, energy storage and other distributed energy resources (DERs) to consistently deliver high-value, reliable electricity. These systems are designed by taking a customer’s energy needs into consideration during planning and commissioning to ensure EnTech can provide absolute value for each system installed.

Traditionally, sources of renewable energy have been managed locally at their physical locations. When a company deployed a microgrid, technicians would need to be at its location to adjust settings or perform updates.

Microgrids are a focus of POWER’s virtual Distributed Energy Experience, scheduled for Oct. 19-22. The event moved online when the in-person Distributed Energy Conference was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.…

AECOM Sells Power Business as Part of Restructuring

October 17, 2020

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The post AECOM Sells Power Business as Part of Restructuring appeared first on POWER Magazine.

AECOM has announced the closing of the sale of its Power construction business to affiliates of CriticalPoint Capital LLC. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Los Angeles, California-based infrastructure consulting firm, which this month announced a restructuring plan, earlier this year closed on the $ 2.4 billion sale of its Maryland-based Management Services business—which provides consulting services to the government sector—to New York-based private equity firms American Securities and Lindsay Goldberg.

“The sale of the Power construction business marks another milestone in the successful execution of our transformation into a higher-margin, lower-risk Professional Services business,” said Troy Rudd, AECOM’s CEO, in an Oct. 16 news release. “We have built significant momentum in our business and continue to advance efforts to align our organization around a global structure that fosters a culture of collaboration, better connects our expertise and focuses on our best growth opportunities.…

China Brings 2.2-GW Solar Park Online

October 11, 2020

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The post China Brings 2.2-GW Solar Park Online appeared first on POWER Magazine.

A Chinese company announced it has brought the world’s second-largest solar farm into commercial operation. Sungrow, which supplies inverters for renewable energy projects, and the state-owned utility Huanghe Hydropower Development on Oct. 9 said a 2.2-GW capacity solar park in the northwest province of Qinghai is now online.

The Qinghai project trails only the 2.3-GW Bhadla solar park in India, which covers more than 10,000 acres and was completed late last year, in generation capacity.

The largest operating solar farm in the U.S. is the 579-MW Solar Star installation in California, which came online in 2015 and at the time was the largest solar array in the world. A larger U.S. project, the 690-MW Gemini solar and battery storage installation in Nevada, was approved earlier this year and is scheduled to be operational by year-end 2023.

Site Includes Energy Storage

The Qinghai project, which also includes 202.86 MWh of energy storage capacity, is located in the desert near the city of Xining.…

Economics Drive Design of DER Systems

October 5, 2020

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The post Economics Drive Design of DER Systems appeared first on POWER Magazine.

Distributed energy systems are transforming the way power is produced and distributed. The decentralized model of power generation, where energy is produced closer to where it will be used, rather than at a large plant elsewhere and sent through the traditional grid, has several advantages, including reducing transmission losses and lowering carbon emissions.

An Oct. 1 session of Experience POWER, supported by POWER magazine, titled “Economics of Distributed Energy Systems,” brought together a panel of industry executives to discuss the many economic factors that need to be considered when developing a distributed energy project. The session provided an overview of those considerations, beginning with the design of cost-effective distributed generation systems. It also looked at the economics and carbon trade-off of enabling photovoltaic integration with storage, along with systems that integrate renewables with hybrid energy storage.

The panel of industry executives included Peter Lilienthal, CEO of HOMER Energy, and developer of HOMER’s hybrid power optimization software.…

The POWER Interview: Cleaning Up a Radiologically Contaminated Site

October 3, 2020

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The post The POWER Interview: Cleaning Up a Radiologically Contaminated Site appeared first on POWER Magazine.

In the 1940s, the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant was built in unprecedented secrecy as part of the Manhattan Project. Its purpose was to provide enriched uranium for the world’s first atomic bomb, and it expanded operations during the Cold War, producing enriched uranium for defense and commercial purposes.

Uranium enrichment operations were halted at the site in 1985, and the plant was officially closed in 1987. UCOR, an Amentum-led partnership with Jacobs, has been the prime cleanup contractor at the site since 2011. POWER interviewed Kenneth Rueter, president and CEO of UCOR, to learn more about the work that has taken place at the site and how lessons learned could apply to nuclear power plant decommissioning projects.

POWER: The project was obviously extensive. Did the cleanup effort begin immediately and continue nonstop? If so, what were the most time-consuming aspects of the job?…

THE BIG PICTURE [Infographic]: The LNG Trade Shakeup

October 1, 2020

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The post THE BIG PICTURE [Infographic]: The LNG Trade Shakeup appeared first on POWER Magazine.

In 2019, global liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports reached 482 billion cubic meters, up 13% from 2018, accord- ing to BloombergNEF figures cited in the International Gas Union’s August–released Global Gas Report 2020. Last year, the world also saw a definitive shakeup in rankings of importers and exporters.

Compared to 2018, LNG imports by Japan and South Korea each fell 7%, while China imported 14% more LNG, taking South Korea’s spot as the world’s second-largest LNG importer. Europe, notably, also imported 76% more LNG than in 2018, reaching a record 117 billion cubic meters in 2019. Qatar retained the top export spot in 2019, but its share in the global supply market is now nearly tied with Australia’s. Whether these rankings will endure over 2020 remains uncertain owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, which widely dampened LNG trade.

Source: Global Gas Report 2020, BloombergNEF / International Gas Union / Snam 2020

Click on graphic or here for a larger version

—Sonal Patel, POWER senior associate editor.…