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The POWER Interview: Technology Helps Integrate Renewables to the Grid

June 17, 2019

Patrick Lee, who founded and leads PXiSE Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of San Diego, California-based Sempra Energy, is a proponent of energy sharing. His company builds enhanced grid management systems, using data, insights, and algorithms “to maximize efficiency and reliability of all DERs [distributed energy resources] as one system.” In other words, a PXiSE-supported microgrid is designed to interact with the grid, balancing the supply and demand of power, in an energy-sharing mode, rather than just managing an islanded microgrid.

The company’s Active Control Technology (ACT) platform is used at Sempra’s headquarters in San Diego as well as at other sites, including Con Edison’s 200-MW Great Valley Solar project near Fresno, California; the 110-MW Pima Solar facility in Mexico; and in distribution grids in Australia operated by Horizon Power.

Patrick Lee

Lee has said PSiXE’s technology provides a cost-effective way for users to move from fossil-fueled power generation to renewables. Lee recently talked with POWER about how PSiXE approaches the challenge of integrating renewable power generation to the grid.…

Energy Insiders Say Tech, Collaboration Key to Utility Storm Prep

June 13, 2019

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Hurricane season is underway and summer heat already has arrived in many areas, which again puts the spotlight on utilities, the power grid, and disaster response plans after a series of major weather events and wildfires caused outages and other disruptions in the U.S. and Caribbean in recent years.

“We’re seeing these events occur, and regardless of where you stand on climate change, we have to ask ourselves, ‘How do we as utility deal with this?’ ” said Darrel Anderson, president and CEO of IDACORP Inc., which includes Idaho Power as a subsidiary, as he kicked off a panel discussion titled “Taming Nature’s Fury: Electric Companies and Extreme Weather Events,” on June 11 at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention in Philadelphia. The panel included Margaret Peloso, a partner with Vinson & Elkins who deals with environmental and natural resource issues; Ronald Brise, a former commissioner with the Florida Public Service Commission; and Barnie Gyant, a deputy regional forester with the U.S.…

How the U.S. Is Investing in Advanced Coal Technologies

June 11, 2019

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The U.S. is investing heavily to ensure its future coal-fired power fleet will be cleaner, more efficient, and more flexible, experts said at the 9th International Conference on Clean Coal Technologies in Houston on June 4.

The conference—which is taking place this week in the U.S. for the first time—is spearheaded by the IEA Clean Coal Centre (IEA CCC), an autonomous collaborative partnership organized under the International Energy Agency (IEA), and co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The U.S. Energy Association (USEA), which represents 150 members across the U.S. energy sector, is also backing the conference. As Andrew Minchener, general manager of the IEA CCC, noted, the conference and workshop are modes of “knowledge transfer and capacity building,” but the event also serves as a “clear and impartial dialogue on the relative merits on coal technologies.”

For the most part, discussions at the conference about the future of coal were framed by the drastic changes affecting the energy sector, including concerted decarbonization efforts bolstered by the Paris Agreement, that threaten to diminish coal’s share in global energy demand.…

India’s Coal Future Hinges on Advanced Ultrasupercritical Breakthroughs

June 7, 2019

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India is striving to conserve coal and slash its carbon emissions. The country which depended on coal for 56% of its total capacity of 356 GW as of May 2019, wants to reduce coal’s share to 45% of a planned capacity expansion to 480 GW by the end of 2022. During that period, it will also work to increase its share of renewables from the current 22% to 37%.

Leading the expansion is one of India’s largest power companies, NTPC. Formerly known as National Thermal Power Corp., the 70% state-owned company in 2010 became a “maharatna” company—a special designation that means it has greater autonomy from the central government in decision-making. Furthermore, the designation allows NTPC to incur unlimited capital expenditures, enter into joint ventures or strategic alliances, and restructure or raise debt from capital markets. It also has allowed the company, which currently has a fleet of 53 GW, to diversify, and by 2032, NTPC aims to make non-fossil-fuel-based generation capacity 30% of its portfolio.…

POWER Notebook: GE Plant in France, Targeted for Job Cuts, Will Not Close

June 5, 2019

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The head of GE’s operations in France told a Paris newspaper that a French factory targeted for more than 1,000 job cuts will not close. GE last week said it wanted to make its operations in France more efficient and said changes would come at the Belfort plant in eastern France, which handles technology for GE Power’s hydro, gas, steam, and nuclear technology.

Bruno Le Maire, France’s economy minister, had said he would try to save jobs at the plant after GE’s announcement on May 28. Job cuts were expected to be negotiated with the plant’s labor unions. GE had said it could cut up to 1,044 jobs at Belfort, where it employs about 4,300 workers, including 1,900 in the gas power unit. GE had said 792 job cuts could come from that unit, with other positions eliminated in support divisions.

Hugh Bailey, general manager of GE in France, in an interview published June 2 in the Paris-based Le Journal du Dimanche, was quoted as saying, “I want to be clear, Belfort will not close.…

MHPS, Magnum Will Build 1-GW Renewable Energy Storage Facility in Utah

June 3, 2019

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Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) and Magnum Development, the owner of a large and geographically rare underground salt dome in Utah, have teamed to develop a massive project that could store up 1,000 MW of renewable energy year-round and provide it to variability-challenged Western power markets.

The companies this week signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop the $ 1 billion Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project in Millard, in central Utah, MHPS CEO Paul Browning told POWER on May 30. The project has the backing of Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R), who lauded the project for its potential to “put Utah on the map as the epicenter of utility-scale storage for the Western U.S.”

A Rare Opportunity

ACES will comprise a series of facilities above and within the Magnum Salt Dome, a geologic formation that was tectonically developed from a bedded salt deposit, and which seismic mapping suggests measures at least one mile thick and about three miles wide.…