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Watch Stack Come Down at Florida Power Plant

July 21, 2019

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.…

The POWER Interview: CleanCapital Drives Investments in Clean Energy

July 17, 2019

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Investments in clean energy projects have hummed along in the past few years, with the growth of renewables worldwide continuing to increase levels of solar, wind, and other resources in the global energy mix.

Thomas Byrne has been in the middle of this energy transformation. Byrne, co-founder and CEO of CleanCapital and a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley and the UCLA School of Law, leads the company’s strategy and operations. Before CleanCapital, he served as partner and general counsel at True Green Capital, a private equity firm focused on distributed solar investments. He led the financing of landmark clean energy projects including NRG’s California Valley Solar Ranch, Caithness’ Shephards Flat Wind Project, and Terra Gen’s Alta Wind Energy Center.

Thom Byrne of CleanCapital

In his role as an attorney specializing in clean energy financing, Byrne saw first-hand how inefficiency was hampering the growth of clean energy investment. He envisioned a technology-based solution, and founded CleanCapital, which looks to connect investors with opportunities in the clean energy space, with an eye toward “reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and generating attractive returns to boot.”…

POWER Notebook: Investment in Renewables Down in 1H2019

July 15, 2019

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Investments in renewable energy projects slowed in the first half of 2019, primarily due to a 39% year-over-year drop in China, the world’s largest renewables market, according to data published July 10 by BloombergNEF (BNEF).

BNEF said investments in China dropped to $ 28.8 billion, the lowest figure for any six-month period since 2013. China is moving away from government-set tariffs for solar and wind capacity and instead moving to auctions for renewable power. BNEF said global investment in renewables was $ 117.6 billion in the first half of this year, off 14% compared to the January-June 2018 period.

Justin Wu, head of Asia-Pacific for BNEF, in a news release said: “The slowdown in investment in China is real, but the figures for first-half 2019 probably overstate its severity. We expect a nationwide solar auction happening now to lead to a rush of new PV project financings. We could also see several big deals in offshore wind in the second half.”…

How to Position Your Power Company for the Future

July 1, 2019

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Faced with the challenge of making the right moves to accommodate a swiftly changing energy ecosystem, one question draws into sharp focus for generators and the entire power and utilities industry: What will their role become in the years ahead, considering evolving portfolio mixes and changing industry dynamics?

Leaders know there’s a very real possibility that if they don’t fortify that answer quickly, they’ll continue to lose ground to new entrants eager to step in and take their place. It doesn’t have to be that way. We believe that power and utilities can avoid this fate by shifting toward a new role—what we’re calling a Utility Platform Player.

Evolving Frontier for Generation

The days of highly centralized generation, with business decisions largely focused on pursuing economies of scale, continue to transform into a world that is becoming far more decentralized. This is happening as more and more customers invest in their own sources of generation—from rooftop or commercial-scale solar facilities to microturbines or other technologies that produce power on a non-centralized basis.…

The POWER Interview: Technology Helps Integrate Renewables to the Grid

June 17, 2019

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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.…