Belgium-based Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V. is sponsoring a research program at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) that may dramatically reduce the incidence of post-natal fatalities in developing countries.

Statkraft AS, Norway’s state-owned power company, said it plans to plow as much as 60 billion kroner ($8.1 billion) into renewable energy around the world in the coming years after the government boosted its funding.

Visitor centers at large hydro projects in the U.S. nearly became an endangered species after 9/11. Fears about additional attacks on critical infrastructure led to restricting public access to many hydro projects, putting visitor centers in jeopardy.

GDF Suez SA plans to double renewable power production capacity in Europe over the next decade as the utility shifts its focus away from developing more historic natural gas and nuclear energy sources in the region.

RWE AG, the German utility whose coal-fired plants make it Europe’s largest carbon emitter, officially started the company’s largest renewables project on Thursday: a wind farm in Liverpool Bay off Britain’s coast.

Stanford, Oxford and Georgetown universities have won praise for promising to purge their endowments of direct investments in coal, embracing the fight against climate change.

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) is funding the Ireland division of U.S.-based Ocean Renewable Power Co. (ORPC) to identify feasible tidal energy sites in the coastal waters of County Donegal. 

According to the Federal Register, potential power is presently unutilized at the 800-kW East powerhouse and proposed 700-kW West powerhouse for the Potsdam hydroelectric project on the Raquette River in Lancaster County, New York. The proposed West powerhouse received a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exemption from licensing in 1981.  

At more than 10,800 ft above sea level, the 510-MW Zangmu Hydropower Station -- the largest in Tibet and one of the highest elevation hydroelectric facilities in the world -- is fully operational. Constructed at a cost of US$1.5 billion, the facility is located in Gyaca County, Shannan Prefecture on the Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra River), that flows through Tibet downstream into India and Bangladesh.

Published reports indicate the 165-MW Sultan Mahmud hydroelectric facility located on the Kenyir River in the interior district of Hulu Terengganu, Malaysia, suffered no damage after a 2.7 magnitude earthquake was recorded 10 km below the surface of its catchment, Kenyir Lake, at 9:25 p.m. local time on Feb. 23.  

On July 18, Empresa Publica de Producao de Electricidade (PRODEL) Project Manager, Celso Pontes, announced phase one at the 40-MW Matala hydroelectric project is complete and the detailed design of the second phase is now being prepared.
 

By the time this column is published, oral arguments in the legal challenge to the Clean Power Plan will have already been made. The en banc panel of 10 appeals court judges is not likely to render its decision before the New Year.  No matter the opinion, it will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Construction resumed Oct. 4 on tunnel works after a brief work stoppage that began on Sept. 28 at the 20-MW Lower Modi Khola run-of-river hydropower facility.
 

U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Patty Murray, D-Wash., today announced funding will be awarded to build the United States’ first open-ocean, power grid-connected wave energy test facility at a site off the Oregon coast, according to a U.S. Senate press release.
 

Only time will tell whether this is right, but EV adoption is clearly rising both on the individual and fleet fronts. Utilities such as Southern California Edison and Ameren, among many others, are working to build EV charging infrastructure and align power distribution in a way to handle it.

What happens when a famously left-leaning city dives into the buttoned-down business of electric utilities? San Francisco may soon find out.

This week, ConEdison subsidiary, Orange & Rockland Utilities (O&R) and Key Capture Energy (KCE) announced that O&R has selected KCE, an Albany-based, independent developer of utility-scale battery storage projects, will plan, design, install and operate O&R’s new battery storage project in Pomona.

New research shows that small run-of-river (ROR) hydropower projects can provide just as much baseload stability as reservoir-based hydropower plants while being highly responsive to real-time grid and market changes. This means that as the U.S. seeks to expand renewable energy sources without compromising reliability, one option is more flexible (and profitable) hydropower that doesn’t involve dams.

Last week, the Energy Web Foundation (EWF) announced it had officially signed more than 100 affiliates in an effort to become the world’s largest blockchain ecosystem.

The unit of NextEra Energy announced plans to build a 409-MW energy storage facility in Manatee County. FPL says the Manatee Energy Storage Center will be the world’s largest solar-power battery system by four-fold.

Clean-energy visionaries have long argued that the world needs a better battery capable of selling skeptical consumers on electric cars and running the grid on renewable power. And yet the battery of the future—at least for the coming decade—will almost certainly be the battery of the past.

The viability of electric vehicles depends in part on a manufacturing plant in eastern Australia, where gleaming white cabinets the size of large refrigerators are loaded onto shipping crates. They’re among the most advanced car chargers available, promising to deliver a full tank of juice in minutes.

Cities and renewable electricity have, respectively, become the habitat and energy of choice globally. The two are increasingly inseparable. Urbanization and electrification trends have turned cities and the grid into leading platforms for human activity, presenting unique opportunities for today’s utilities to partner with municipalities to achieve their smart city goals.

This weekend at its “Earth Day Every Day Fair,” Green Mountain Power announced an energy vision to have a 100 percent carbon free energy supply by 2025 and 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The utility said the move is among the most aggressive carbon targets for a utility of GMP’s size in the country.

Last Friday evening in Surprise, Arizona a storage facility owned by Arizona Public Service (APS) exploded, injuring four firefighters. Reporter for azfamily.com, Maria Hechanova, visited the scene yesterday and reported that the explosion happened while four hazmat firefighters from Peoria were working to extinguish a battery fire at the facility.

ABB is working with Italian utility Evolvere on how to use blockchain technology to deliver transparent and secure peer-to-peer energy transactions.

“Recognizing leaders in the power and energy industry not only gives us the opportunity to celebrate them and the projects that they are involved in, it also enables us to learn vital business and life lessons from these often exceptional individuals. We find out what makes them tick, what frustrates them and the processes they follow to address challenges – this is often inspiring, eye-opening stuff and cannot but contribute to the growth of the sector.“

Eos Energy Storage is manufacturer and supplier of the zinc-based Aurora 2.0 battery system for Duke Energy's McAlpine substation and as a behind-the-meter solution at the University of California, San Diego. 

Homeowners and businesses may now have an easier time getting solar panels on rooftops thanks to software developed at Sandia.

Last week in San Antonio, Texas, about 150 DISTRIBUTECH stakeholders convened to discuss industry trends, best practices for marketing and sales in the utility industry and set the educational agenda for the 2020 event.

Energy generation and consumption is rapidly transforming into a decentralized, decarbonized, and digitized model due to a number of market forces. The declining costs of solar energy systems, as well as the increasing price of energy from the grid has led to grid parity. This has caused PV proliferation to accelerate to such an extent that in the past five years alone, PV installed capacity has increased by 300%. Simultaneously, the EV market is also on the rise and is expected to reach the electrification tipping point by 2030. This is due to support from governments trying to limit the effects of climate change, thus leading to automotive manufactures transitioning their fleets from standard petrol- and diesel-powered cars to EVs. As a result of the acceleration of both of these markets, EV charging has created demand patterns causing an even steeper and faster ramp-up in the evenings than the PV duck curve. , This is causing the grid’s balancing act to be increasingly complex. In order to support this new energy dynamic, advanced management software is required to ensure grid stabilization and to unlock the value of these energy resources.

Gas peaker plants may be among the first casualties of a new Minnesota law requiring utilities to include energy storage as part of their long-range plans.

Global infrastructure services firm AECOM said that Shell Retail has hired it to deliver ultrafast electrical vehicle (EV) chargers across the Netherlands. A total of 200 fast chargers – under the brand name Shell Recharge - will be available at Shell forecourts (filling stations).

A new report from Navigant Research released this week says that revenue from device and data management technologies could grow from approximately $14.8 billion in 2018 to more than $22.1 billion in 2027 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6%.

The latest crop of utility participants includes NRG Energy, Cleco Corp., Entergy, Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, AEP’s distributed energy ventures group AEP OnSite Partners and Hindustan Power from India.

Presentation by Jason Fullerton of ACI Technologies, Inc.

Presentation by Reza Ghaffarian, Ph.D. of NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Most talk of "energy efficiency" and “sustainability” is insidious or naïve, or even misdirected. We all should switch off the lights when we leave a room, use efficient, gas-fired tankless water heaters (even when they are uneconomical), and work in LEED certified buildings. Intelligent thermostats — Nest, for instance — may regulate our air-conditioning to assure comfort while generating savings, and shaving “peak” load on the electricity grid. Using LED lamps and star rated appliances is admirable too. These solutions and behaviors, while praiseworthy, are beside the point; we should rather favor “supply action” before demand response.

New York State is pushing its utility industry to shift away from a century-old business model into a system that can accommodate more power from solar and wind.

Bracing for greenhouse-gas rules from the Obama administration, two industries are staking out different positions. Coal companies are pledging to sue. Electric utilities are ready to talk.

On what effect the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan will have on transmission development in the country, including potentially a need for more transmission to transport added renewable energy, Frank Poirot, senior media specialist of transmission with Northeast Utilities (NYSE:NU) told TransmissionHub that increasing the grid's capacity to transmit power is one way to meet the growing need and enable renewable generation.

U.S. electricity markets face years of higher prices as clean-air regulations shut more coal-fired power plants than earlier forecast, cutting supply and forcing producers to rely more on natural gas.

A new report by utility and finance experts contains positive news for the environment, our air and our (and our utilities’) pocketbooks — the economics of electric power resources have made zero-emissions energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies the most financially attractive options to meet the nation’s future energy demands.

Let's review some notable news headlines from the month of November.

In May of 2014, Speaker of the House John Boehner responded to a climate change question with, “listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change. I am astute to understand that every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs. That can’t be the prescription for dealing with changes to our climate.” Speaker Boehner is not the only one reluctant to enter into the debate on climate change. In a March interview Mitch McConnell responded to a climate change remark with, “For everybody who thinks it's warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn't…”

Although the U.S. made it through a quiet 2014 Atlantic hurricane season this year, it doesn’t mean we’re out of the waters. Natural disasters are an ongoing threat to our infrastructure, and utilities need to be conscious of the present state and future of our power grid. Fortunately, in recent years many utilities across the country have recognized the importance of being prepared for major storms, and have been actively researching and implementing solutions to prepare for the next big one.

China is mulling a policy to provide a subsidy for lithium batteries deployed in electric vehicles. This new favorable policy is expected to propel the development of the country’s electric vehicle sector. China has existing subsidy policies for the sector, but higher prices for the parts used in electric vehicles, in particular lithium batteries, prevent many consumers from purchasing the vehicles.

Many businesses can now perform the traditional functions of an electric utility — provide affordable, reliable, resilient power to homes and businesses. The barriers to entry in the business have fallen. For instance, a home with rooftop solar panels, batteries, and gas-based generators may choose to be grid-independent. Even when homes decide to remain grid-tied, utilities face falling demand and revenue, and the possibility of future grid-defection. Further, competing electricity solutions can emerge quickly, and not one-home-at-a-time — microgrids can offer community, village, or campus-level solutions.

Europe’s utilities are re-evaluating their business models due to the energy transition. Members of POWER-GEN Europe’s Advisory Board consider how a reliance on fossil fuels is no longer politically desirable, forcing utilities to transform their portfolios to adapt to radical change.

By Kelly Scanlon, director, environment, health and safety policy and research, IPC The U.S. Environmental Protection Associations (EPA) is seeking public comment on a proposed 2020 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Multi-Sector General Permit (MSGP) for stormwater discharges from industrial activity. This proposed permit would replace the 2015 MSGP upon finalization. This proposed permit […]