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New Mexico Governor Grisham signs law requiring 100 percent renewable energy by 2045

On Friday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the state’s groundbreaking Energy Transition Act (ETA) into law, meaning that by 2045, the state should be fully powered by clean, carbon-free electricity.




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Three ways utilities can partner with smart renewable cities to deliver on their objectives

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.




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IREC’s career map shows climate change related employment opportunities on the rise

A new career map, Careers in Climate Control Technology, provides a first-of-its-kind interactive, visual tool to showcase the employment opportunities that exist in the swiftly growing HVAC/R industry – Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration. The sector is on track for projected growth of 15 percent from 2016 to 2026.




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India's largest coal-fired power producer appoints renewables head to speed transition

State-run NTPC Ltd., India’s largest coal-fired power producer, is appointing a new head of its renewables team to speed up its expansion into clean energy, according to a company official with knowledge of the plan.




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Renewable energy market employs 11 million in 2018 – IRENA

Eleven million people were employed in renewable energy worldwide in 2018 according to the latest analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).




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PNM plans early retirement of coal plant with massive addition of solar + storage

On July 1, Public Service of New Mexico filed a plan with regulators in the state for how it plans to get to a 100 percent emission-free power by 2040. The utility reviewed four scenarios, all of which involved the early retirement of the San Juan Coal Plant, to arrive at its recommended path forward.




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Air conditioning is the world's next big threat

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet.




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Saudi Arabia set to build first wind farm

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is poised to start generating wind power within three years as part of an effort to harness renewable energy to cut local demand for fossil fuels.





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New POWERGEN award program seeks inspirational women of excellent character

In recognition of the widely acknowledged studies that show that organizations with gender equality perform better financially, this year POWERGEN International, along with partner UL, is launching a new awards program that seeks out women of good character.




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Pickup trucks outsell cars for the first time, and it may not be temporary

The Ford F-150, Ram 1500, and Chevy Silverado have been the best-selling light vehicles in America for a long time, but for the first time ever, the pickup truck segment as a whole outsold the car segment in the month of April, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The difference was by a large margin, too, with pickups outselling cars by more than...




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Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Setup with Ubuntu and XAMPP PHP Server

Microsoft Azure is another great alternate cloud service and it is offering a one-year free trial with $200 credit. This post is almost similar to my previous Cloud service article. This will explain to you how to set up a virtual machine instance with secure firewall rules and setting up a XAMPP(PHP Maria DB Server) using the Ubuntu operating system. Microsoft Azure has lots of free project management services. This is very useful for your side projects.





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DOE Releases Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Hawaii

DOE released a final programmatic environmental impact statement for Hawaii to provide federal, state and county governments as well as the public and developers with a reference document for project-specific environmental reviews.




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Inspiring Young Women To Pursue Careers in Energy

At last night’s PennWell Awards Ceremony, Kim Greene, a 24-year veteran of the power industry, was named the POWER-GEN 2015 Woman of the Year.

Greene began her career as an engineer with Southern Company in 1991 and ascended to leadership roles at Mirant and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), before returning to Southern Company Services in 2013 to become President and CEO. She was a keynote speaker at POWER-GEN International in 2014.

Today, she serves as chief operating officer of Southern Company and is responsible for overseeing system operations, which include generation, transmission, engineering and construction services, system planning, and research and environmental affairs, as well as the company’s competitive wholesale generation businesses.





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City Utility Trials Voltage Optimization in First for Western Canada

The city utility for Lethbridge, Alberta is starting a voltage optimization trial that is expected to deliver energy savings for customers while reducing overall energy usage in the city’s electricity distribution system.




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Is Climate Change or Negligence Responsible for Calif. Fires?

It was California’s biggest fire yet. In late July and August, wildfires devastated an area north of San Francisco far bigger than New York City, destroying more than 100 homes and injuring 2 fire fighters. It’s just one in a rash of fast-spreading blazes that have killed at least 56 people this year and last in the Golden State.




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New DERMS Partnership Helps Utilities Use Residential Batteries as Virtual Power Plants

This week Autogrid announced that it entered into a partnership with Swell Energy to provide software for managing Swell’s growing fleet of distributed energy resources (DER).




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Ørsted Acquires Deepwater Wind for $510 Million

On Monday, global offshore wind leader Ørsted announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire a 100 percent of Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind at a purchase price of US $510 million. Deepwater wind built the first U.S. offshore wind farm — the 30-MW Block Island Wind — and is currently constructing two additional facilities off Long Island, New York (South Fork at 90 MW) and Connecticut (Revolution Wind at 600 MW).




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IRENA: Egypt Could Meet Up to 53 Percent of Electricity Demand with Renewables

Egypt has the potential to meet up to 53 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The Egypt Renewable Energy Outlook, released in Cairo last week in the presence of Egyptian government officials and regional decision makers, found that pursuing higher shares of renewable energy could reduce the country’s energy bill by up to $900 million annually in 2030.




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South Africa's Eskom Facing `Death Spiral' Driven by Distributed Solar Energy

Bloated by debt, bled by corruption and battered by structurally declining sales, South African power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is facing what’s known in the industry as a “death spiral.”




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NV Energy Reorients Generation Mix toward Solar, Retiring Coal

The Public Utility Commission of Nevada has approved NV’s long-term IRP to double its renewable energy capacity by 2023. The utility will bring 1,001 MW of solar capacity online via six new power purchase agreements (PPAs).




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Renewables Beat Coal in Germany Power Mix for First Time

Renewable energy muscled out coal to become Germany’s biggest source of electricity for the first time last year, helped by a surge in solar panel installations and coal-plant closures.




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IRENA: Transition to Renewable Energy May Create an Entirely Different World

This week at the Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), political and business leaders from around the world outlined the far-reaching geopolitical implications of an energy transformation driven by the rapid growth of renewable energy.




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A Study in Emissionality: Why Boston University Looked Beyond New England for Its First Wind Power Purchase

While it’s well known that corporations were some of the earliest trailblazers of large-scale renewable energy purchasing — they’ve closed over 14 gigawatts of deals in the past six years, according to tracking by Rocky Mountain Institute’s Business Renewables Center — higher education has also made impressive strides. In fact, a report released last fall showed that the top 30 renewable energy-buying universities are using around 3 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually. That’s enough to power 276,000 homes.




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Ameresco Acquiring Maximum Solar to Increase Commercial-Scale Services

As part of its acquisition of Maximum Solar, Ameresco said, it will further develop in-house services to operate and maintain solar facilities. Maximum Solar currently manages about 150 MW of solar throughout the northeastern U.S.




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LaFleur Will Not Seek a Third Term as FERC Commissioner

Federal energy regulatory commissioner Cheryl LaFleur announced on Twitter on January 31 that she will not be seeking a third term and will be leaving the commission later in 2019. She said in the tweet that this is not the outcome she had hoped for but that she felt very lucky to have served on FERC for more than 8 years. She said she plans to serve out the rest of her term, which is up at the end of June.




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Clean Energy Group Says Georgia Power’s New IRP Falls Short on Solar, Energy Efficiency

On January 31, 2019, Georgia Power, the largest utility in the state submitted its newest integrated resource plan (IRP) to the state utility commission for approval.




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Thailand planning massive floating solar power plants on hydropower dam reservoirs

Thailand plans to build the world’s largest floating solar farms to power Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy and to boost the country’s share of clean energy.




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New York utility installing battery to reduce peaks in non-wires alternative plan

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.






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Air conditioning is the world's next big threat

The vast majority of Americans have air conditioning but in Germany almost nobody does. At least not yet.




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Saudi Arabia set to build first wind farm

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is poised to start generating wind power within three years as part of an effort to harness renewable energy to cut local demand for fossil fuels.




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Boeing to launch Australia’s first locally built combat aircraft since 1942

The Boeing Company is set to design and build a large, military unmanned air vehicle (UAV) in Australia, with the first flight set for 2020. The Australian government will invest A$40 million in the project.




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Japan–Australia tech partnership to fire new ideas for health and aged care

Aged care in Australia is set for a digital boost after a Japan–Australia IT group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Australian universities to solve social challenges common to both countries.




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An irrigation network in Japan offers more than 1.4 MW of potential generation

The addition of hydropower generating capacity to an irrigation network in northern Japan is one step closer to completion. Several sites have been identified for the installation of VLH turbines, with a total capacity of 1.433 MW.




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Dam safety, dam monitoring, dam repair news and more

Collection of articles covering safety and security of dams and civil structures




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Carbon Emissions Stop Rising for First Time in 40 Years

Global emissions were unchanged last year, the first time that’s happened amid economic growth in four decades, according to the International Energy Agency.




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Two Workers Die in “Landslide” at Hamzadere Dam Irrigation System in Turkey

Two construction workers died as the result of a landslide and additional workers were injured on May 22 at the construction site of the Hamzadere Dam Irrigation System in the Ipsala district of Edirne, Turkey. Edirne is in the northwestern-most part of the Turkey near its border with Greece.




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For All Their Talk, Colleges Divest Little After Climate Protest

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.

 




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Germany Gives Dirtiest Coal Plants Six Years for Phase Out

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said 13 percent of power stations burning lignite, a cheap form of coal, would be phased out by 2021 under a program to cut power industry pollution. The government abandoned talks on proposals to impose a climate-change fee that the industry said would have forced mines and plants to close, threatening jobs.




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Nepal awards contract for first large-scale pumped-storage hydropower project

Engineering firm Lahmeyer International GmbH and sub-consultant Manitoba Hydro International have been awarded a contract by Tanahu Hydropower Ltd. to provide a number of services associated with the development of the 140-MW Tanahu pumped-storage project in Nepal.




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Italy's ERG Power Generation acquires 527 MW of hydroelectric power from E.ON

German utility E.ON has agreed to sell its 527 MW Terni hydroelectric power complex to Genoa-based ERG Power Generation S.p.A.




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Seattle City Light evacuates 711-MW Skagit hydropower project amidst wildfire

Safety concerns raised by wildfires have forced utility Seattle City Light to evacuate employees from the town of Diablo, the nearby 711-MW Skagit hydropower complex and the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center.




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ORPC Ireland receives funding for marine hydrokinetic feasibility study

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. 




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Venezuela uses a ROV to inspect Guri Reservoir infrastructure amidst water level decline

Venezuela's government is taking measures to inspect the infrastructure of the country’s main hydroelectric-related civil structure as rising temperatures, reduced precipitation and increased energy demand affect water levels at the 4,000-square-mile Guri Reservoir.  




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Chilhowee Reservoir drawdown to inspect seepage at 44-MW Chilhowee hydroelectric project

Project owner Brookfield Smoky Mountain Hydropower LLC (BSMH) is drawing down Chilhowee Reservoir, part of the 44-MW Chilhowee hydroelectric facility, to investigate seepage at the Chilhowee Dam on the Little Tennessee River in Blount and Monroe counties, Tenn.  




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Sen. Murkowski introduces pair of Alaskan hydroelectric power bills

Hearings on a pair of bills held by the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week could potentially lead to an expansion of hydroelectric power in Alaska.




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Incidents continue at Brazil’s Petrobras, with chairman’s resignation

Murilo Ferreira, chairman of Brazil-based energy conglomerate Petrobras (Petroleo Brasileiro SA), has stepped down effective Nov. 30.