Xcel Energy has launched North Dakota’s first Federal Aviation Administration-sanctioned utility flight of an unmanned aircraft. The drone, which measures about 4.5 feet in length, resembles a small helicopter and is being used to inspect a 7-mile section of a transmission line as part of an FAA pilot project.
The aircraft Xcel is using is a Pulse Aerospace Vapor 35, a 35-pound drone with about a 5-mile, one-hour range while transmitting images and data to a ground station. The 230-kV line runs from Xcel’s Prairie substation in Grand Forks to the Canadian border, where it connects with Manitoba Hydro Electric Energy.
The drone technology can also be used in security flights to assess infrastructure damage and construction work.
More: Forum News Service
Coal-Fired Power Plants Begin Installing Emissions Controls
Two Farmington-area power plants in northeastern New Mexico have begun installing pollution controls to comply with federal regulations intended to reduce atmospheric haze. The multimillion-dollar retrofitting projects at San Juan Generating Station and Four Corners Power Plant are to be completed by 2018.
The upgrades are intended to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1999 regional haze rule, which calls for the “best available retrofit technology” to be added to industrial facilities that emit air pollutants that cause or contribute to regional haze. EPA finalized additional portions of the rule this summer.
The pollution controls will also help the state comply with EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon pollution from power plants to address climate change.
More: The Daily Times
PPL Planning New Pa.-NY Transmission Project
PPL Electric Utilities is proposing a transmission line linking the grids of northern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York to strengthen reliability in the region.
Called Project Compass, the line is expected to cost $500 million to $600 million. The first leg would be a 95-mile 345-kV line running from Lackawanna County, Pa., to Rockland County, N.Y.
The link is expected to save New York customers $200 million annually. PPL, which operates in Pennsylvania, is recommending that New York state customers pay the line’s cost.
More: Times Herald-Record
Kemper Plant Announces Cost Overruns – Again
Southern Co. has increased the estimated cost of its troubled Kemper County coal gasification power plant in Mississippi by another $159 million, the latest price boost for a project whose cost has risen from $2.8 billion initially to $6.4 billion.
Mississippi Power, a Southern subsidiary, said it will absorb about $110 million of the most recent overruns but is likely to ask the state Public Service Commission to pass on to customers the remaining $49 million. The PSC has already allowed Mississippi Power an emergency 18% rate increase after the utility said it was running out of money.
A utility spokesman said much of the most recent cost overruns are associated with the need to fix problems and go into startup mode. The plant may not go into operations until the end of next June.
More: Associated Press
Panda Power Announces Another Pa. Power Plant
Panda Power Funds said it has arranged financing for its latest Pennsylvania natural-gas fired power plant, a 1,124-MW station on the site of the retired Sunbury coal-fired station. Panda said the new Hummel Station will use gas from the nearby Marcellus Shale fields.
Panda is employing a three-on-one combustion turbine combined-cycle plant that uses Siemens turbines and generators. Bechtel will be the construction manager. The plant, which is due to be completed in 30 months, is expected to cost about $710 million.
Hummel Station is Panda’s third new natural-gas plant in Pennsylvania and its seventh in the nation.
More: LCG Consulting; Electric Light & Power
Vermont Yankee Sirens Sounding Together for Last Time
The 37 emergency sirens tied in to the Vermont Yankee nuclear generating station emergency notification network are going to be tested all at once for the last time this weekend, a station spokesman said.
The plant is being decommissioned, and it has a request before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate its emergency planning activities in April. The sirens will still be tested individually until then.
The sirens are located in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire towns located within 10 miles of the plant.
More: Associated Press
Duke Conducting Groundwater Studies Enviros Call Flawed
Duke Energy is assessing groundwater to learn whether ash ponds at its power plants are contaminating private wells. Residents living near two Duke power plants have been advised to avoid drinking well water. Tests conducted by the company have found increased levels of vanadium and hexavalent chromium, which are suspected carcinogens.
There are no federal safety levels for those substances, however, and the state Department of Environmental Quality says the contaminants can occur in areas unrelated to coal ash impoundments, so they may not be connected to the ash dumps. “The fact that some well owners many miles from coal ash impoundments and municipal water customers are consuming water with levels at the same level, or higher, leads investigators to believe that vanadium and hexavalent chromium also occur naturally,” the state health agency wrote well owners Oct. 15.
In a letter to state authorities, the Southern Environmental Law Center said that Duke’s studies are flawed. “The assessments we’ve reviewed contain bad science and do not determine the full extent of Duke Energy’s coal ash pollution of our groundwater and drinking water sources,” it said.
More: The Charlotte Observer
PSE&G Building Solar Plant on Old Landfill
Public Service Electric and Gas is nearing completion on a 13-MW solar array it is building on a closed 50-acre Superfund landfill in Burlington County, N.J.
PSE&G will own and operate the solar farm, which is scheduled to go into service near the end of this year. The facility will be the largest photovoltaic array that PSE&G has built so far under its Solar 4 All program, in which the utility is developing 125 MW of grid-connected solar power.
More: Recycling Today
Cove Point Protesters Disrupt Monday Night Football
Four people were arrested at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., during a Monday Night Football game last week, after activists protesting Dominion Resources’ Cove Point LNG facility rappelled from an overhang in front of the press box.
The protesters, belonging to the organization We Are Cove Point, held a sign that said “BoA: Dump Dominion.” They said they were protesting Bank of America’s financing of the liquefied natural gas export facility in Lusby, Md.
The incident occurred during the third quarter of the game between the Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts. Police and stadium security cleared the section of the stadium below the press box, but firefighters had to forcibly remove the protesters when they refused police orders to come down.
More: The Charlotte Observer; We Are Cove Point
Dynegy to Shutter Wood River Plant
Dynegy announced plans Nov. 4 to close its Wood River Power Station in mid-2016. The 465-MW facility in Alton, Ill., contains two coal-fueled units, one that began operating in 1954 and the other in 1964.
Dynegy said it’s being forced to retire the 60-plus-year-old Wood River because the utility cannot turn a profit under the “poorly designed wholesale capacity market in Central and Southern Illinois that does not allow competitive generators to recover costs.”
Dynegy expects to file a formal retirement notice with MISO by Dec. 1. The RTO will determine whether the plant is needed for grid reliability. Dynegy CEO Robert C. Flexon said that if capacity auction conditions in Illinois don’t change, other generating plants in the MISO-controlled portions of the state could face similar financial obstacles.
More: The Telegraph
Entergy Names Hinnenkamp COO; Will Oversee Capital Investments
Entergy announced Oct. 30 it has appointed Paul Hinnenkamp as its senior vice president and COO, effective Nov. 1. Hinnenkamp replaces the outgoing Mark Savoff and will report directly to the New Orleans-based corporation’s chairman and CEO, Leo Denault.
Hinnenkamp is responsible for executive oversight of fossil generation, transmission, system planning and capital projects-management. Denault said his assignment will be important “at a time when we are deploying significant capital resources to replace aging generation and modernize our grid for enhanced reliability.”
Earlier this year, Entergy reported the need to add approximately $3.7 billion in new generation resources consisting of six new power plants by 2020 and 635 miles of new and upgraded transmission by 2022.
More: Entergy
Exelon Says Feds Knew About Radioactive Dumps
Exelon is accusing the federal government of having knowledge of and approving a radiological waste dump in the 70s that is now causing concern because of an underground fire at an adjacent landfill.
In 1973, 43,000 tons of what was billed as “clean fill dirt” was dumped at West Lake Landfill on the western edge of St. Louis County; however, almost a quarter of the dirt was in fact radioactive waste from a nearby storage site owned by Colorado-based Cotter Corp.
Today, Exelon Chicago retains Cotter’s liability for the West Lake contamination, while the Department of Energy holds the liability for the Atomic Energy Commission, which records show ultimately approved the dump despite false claims by Cotter about the location.
In 1974, AEC approved the termination of Cotter’s license for the radioactive material, a move critics say should have never happened. By 1975, AEC was dissolved, with responsibilities eventually passed to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The former commission had long been accused of being too cozy with the nuclear industry.
Public concern about the incident has recently increased because of an underground fire burning at the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill, prompting concern that the fire will spread to West Lake and release radiation. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that the fire is not moving toward West Lake, and a plan for cleanup will be introduced in late 2016. In the meantime, Exelon has inferred that the federal government might have allowed more toxic waste into the landfill since Cotter’s dispatch over 40 years ago. A spokesperson for Exelon said more on-site testing at the landfill is needed.
More: St. Louis Post-Dispatch