Tag: Come
Watch Stack Come Down at Florida Power Plant
JEA, the electric utility in Jacksonville, Florida, has been decommissioning the St. Johns River Power Park over the past year. A third implosion as part of the decommissioning occurred July 19, as a 640-foot-tall stack and two steam generating boilers were demolished.
Friday’s work followed similar implosions in June 2018, when the plant’s two, 464-foot-tall cooling towers were taken down, and in April of this year when four selective catalytic reactors were destroyed.
The coal-fired plant, which was closed in January 2018 after operating since March 1987, is scheduled to be fully decommissioned in June 2020. JEA has said it will keep at least some of the 2,000-acre site for a future power station, and also for coal ash disposal. The plant was co-owned by JEA and Florida Power & Light.
Total Wrecking & Environmental, a demolition and remediation company based in Buffalo, New York, was awarded a $ 14.5 million contract to demolish the plant and provided video of Friday’s blast.…
New Gas-Fired Plants Come Online in Michigan
Upper Michigan Energy Resources Corp. (UMERC) placed two new natural gas-fired generating stations into commercial operation on March 31, part of the company’s plan to reshape its generation fleet as it seeks to “balance reliability and customer cost with environmental stewardship.”
UMERC, a subsidiary of WEC Energy Group, also retired the coal-fired 430-MW Presque Isle Power Plant on Sunday. The company in a news release said, “Plans for the future use of the retired coal plant site will be developed as the company continues to evaluate potential uses for the property.”
“The new generating stations are good for our customers, good for business and good for electric reliability throughout the U.P.,” said Kevin Fletcher, president and CEO of WEC Energy Group, in a news release. “Closure of the Presque Isle Power Plant also helps achieve our goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent, well ahead of our 2030 target.”
The new F.D. Kuester Generating Station, in Negaunee Township near Marquette, and the A.J.…
Large Solar Projects Come Online in Hawaii, Florida
Two large solar power projects—located more than 4,600 miles apart—recently came online in the U.S., providing service in Florida and Hawaii.
Duke Energy on Jan. 8 announced its 74.9-MW Hamilton Solar Power Plant was online. The installation in Jasper, Fla., is part of the company’s plan to build or acquire at least 700 MW of solar power in the state by year-end 2022.
On the same day, the Lawai Solar and Energy Storage Project in Lihue, Hawaii, was commissioned by the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC). The facility began operating in December 2018. The project from AES Corp. is considered the world’s largest battery energy storage system (BESS) paired with solar generation. It combines 28 MW of solar photovoltaic generation capacity across a 150-acre site with a lithium-ion BESS of up to 100 MWh capacity.
The BESS is notable because it holds more energy than all but one other U.S. installation, a 120-MWh facility built by AES in Escondido, Calif., in 2017.…
Tianwan Unit 4 Latest Chinese Reactor to Come Online
Unit 4 of the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant in China entered commercial operation this past weekend after completing commissioning. It began supplying power to the country’s national grid on Dec. 22.
Tianwan NPP is the largest facility built with a Russian-Chinese framework of economic cooperation, with Units 1 through 4 based on the VVER-1000 reactor type. Units 1 and 2 entered commercial operation in 2007, and Rosatom handed over Unit 3 to Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corp. (JNPC) in March of this year.
Tianwan Unit 4 was brought to its minimum controllable power level on Sept. 30, marking the final stage of first criticality procedures, which began Aug. 25 when the first fuel assembly was installed in the reactor. A total of 163 fuel assemblies were ultimately loaded.
Russia’s Atomstroyexport was general contractor for the project, working with JNPC. Alexey Bannik, vice president for projects in China with Rosatom’s engineering division, said the start of commercial operation of Unit 4 “means that a two-year warranty period for the plant operation has commenced, and once expired the Unit will ultimately be handed over to the Chinese Party.”…