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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.…

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.…

The POWER Interview: GE Unleashing a Hydrogen Gas Power Future

June 1, 2019

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Since the 1940s, when General Electric (GE), launched its gas turbine operations, the company has pioneered and commercialized a lengthy list of gas turbine technologies, large and small. As the decarbonization movement gains pace and more renewables flood the landscape, the company’s gas turbines have taken on new crucial roles to provide dispatchability and flexibility.

But as questions about the long-term use of natural gas—a fossil fuel—in a carbon-free energy ecosystem emerge, the company is building on years of experience exploring how GE gas turbine technology could run on hydrogen fuels, as Dr. Jeffrey Goldmeer, director of Gas Turbine Combustion & Fuels Solutions for GE Power—and GE’s topmost hydrogen expert—told POWER in an interview this month.

Dr. Jeffrey Goldmeer is the director of Gas Turbine Combustion & Fuels Solutions for GE Power.

POWER: How did you become involved in hydrogen?

Goldmeer: I’ve been in my current role as the fuel-flex leader for the gas turbine business for 12 years. I came to GE Power out of GE Global Research Center, where I worked in combustion for six years, and for the last three years at the R&D center, I actually managed the combustion team there.…

[UPDATED] EPA Sets Schedules for Long List of Power Plant Regulatory Actions

May 26, 2019

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will act on a spate of power plant rules over the next year, its newly released agenda of regulatory and deregulatory actions shows.

The May 23-released “Spring 2019 Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” lists 35 new actions, along with 57 actions that it considers “deregulatory.” The list includes new rules governing coal ash, new insights and timelines for final effluent limitations guidelines and mercury rules, action on “boiler MACT” rules, monitoring and record-keeping clarifications for the mercury and other rules, changes to New Source Review permitting, and an amendment to a rule governing stationary combustion turbines at power plants.

Rule	First time on agenda	Proposed rule	Final rule
Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELG) and Standards		June 2019	August 2020
Rules Governing Definition of “Waters of the U.S.”		July 2017 (supplemental in July 2018)/February 2019	August 2019/December 2019
Coal ash: Amendments to the National Minimum Criteria (Phase 2)		July 2019	December 2019
Coal ash: Federal Coal Combustion Residuals Permitting Program	Yes	July 2019	May 2020
Coal ash: Revision of cease receipt of waste deadline for CCR surface impoundments; response to court	Yes	July 2019	December 2019
Coal ash: Alternative demonstration for unlined surface impoundments/ request for comment on legacy units; response to court	Yes	July 2019	December 2019
MATS: Reconsideration of Supplemental Cost Finding and Residual Risk and Technology Review		February 2019	November 2019
MATS technical corrections, reporting revisions, clarifications		November 2019
NESHAP:Stationary Combustion Turbine Residual Risk and Technology Review		April 2019 (comment period ends on May 28)	January 2020
(Boiler MACT):NESHAP: Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters Amendments		September 2019
Review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter		March 2020
Project emissions accounting under PSD and non attainment NSR		July 2019
Standards of Performance for Stationary Compression Ignition (CI) Internal Combustion Engines Amendments		June 2019	Direct final rule, June 2019
Technical Revisions to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Rule		December 2019	December 2020
Clean Air Act Benefit-Cost Reforms	Yes	December 2019
Revisions to the Petition Provisions of the Title V Permitting Program		August 2016	August 2019
Financial responsibility requirements for power sector		July 2019	December 2020
Accidental release prevention requirements		May 2018	August 2019
General revisions to emissions monitoring and reporting requirements for fossil generators		November 2019	April 2020

The agenda shows “continued progress in reducing regulatory burden” envisioned by President Trump’s proposed regulatory reforms, the agency said in a statement.…

GE Is Banking on Africa’s Burgeoning Power Market

May 19, 2019

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Sub-Saharan Africa’s power generation capacity is projected to surge 4% annually through 2040, and its current energy mix—which is today dominated by hydro and coal—will likely be more diversified as interest rises in renewables such as solar and wind, General Electric (GE) said in a white paper surveying market opportunities in the region that it released in May.

The region is characterized by a seeming “over-dependence on governments” to resolve an energy dilemma: “Governments are faced with investment, policy and regulatory framework challenges that oftentimes hinder their ability to fulfill the responsibility of providing affordable and reliable power,” the white paper says. However, with increasingly diverse funding from public and private sources, including innovative partnerships with private investors and independent power producers (IPPs), “the current narrative that two out of three people in the region needs access to electricity is expected to change,” it says. Among major trends the white paper highlights are that IPPs and public-private partnerships (PPP) will account for 35% of the region’s installed capacity, excluding South Africa, by 2020.…

EIA: Gas, Renewables Outpacing Coal for Power Generation

May 11, 2019

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The percentage of coal-fired generation in the U.S. electricity mix will continue to decline, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said May 9, with gas-fired generation accounting for at least 40% of the nation’s power this summer and output from renewables continuing to rise.

EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) said coal-fired units will produce only about 25% of the nation’s electricity this summer, as renewables including solar, wind, and hydropower take more market share. EIA said renewables will supply nearly a quarter of the power needed in Western states this summer.

The agency said nuclear power, which supplies about 19% of the nation’s electricity, will continue at that level at least through 2020. EIA forecasts that renewables will produce about 18% of U.S. power this year, rising to about 20% next year. The agency said it expects wind generation will surpass hydropower output this year for the first time, taking over the top spot for renewables.

The EIA report comes two weeks after the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reported that data shows renewable energy—including hydro, biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal—in April for the first time generated more electricity in the U.S.…