Global Monitor: Tenaska proposes first new coal-fired plant with carbon capture

Power, Apr 2008

In what could be a focus of legal challenges to the DOE, the department asserted that it did not have to follow federal administrative procedure because its action on the corridors was an 'informal adjudication.' Lawsuits to follow.

face= Bold; Florida blackout caused by engineer error.face=-Bold; In what it called preliminary findings of an ongoing investigation into the blackout, face= Bold; Florida Power & Light Co.face=-Bold; (FPL) said an engineer working on a switch malfunction at a west Miami substation turned off 'two levels of relay protection,' allowing the fault to ripple through the grid, resulting in the loss of power for 2.5 million Floridians in late February.

The company's announcement appears to answer a key question asked by federal officials and investigators with the North American Electric Reliability Corp.: Why wasn't the small short-circuit at the substation quickly isolated by protective devices so it did not spread?

'While still preliminary, the results of the investigation so far indicate that human error was the primary factor immediately responsible for the event,' FPL said in a press release.

'A field engineer was diagnosing a switch that had malfunctioned at FPL's Flagami substation in West Miami,' the utility said. 'Without authorization, the engineer disabled two levels of relay protection. This was done contrary to FPL's standard procedures and established practices. Standard procedures do not permit the simultaneous removal of both levels of protection.

'During the diagnostic process, a fault occurred and, because both levels of relay protection had been removed, caused an outage ultimately affecting 26 transmission lines and 38 substations. One of the substations affected serves three of the generation units at Turkey Point, including a natural gas unit as well as both nuclear units, which, as designed, automatically and safely shut down due to an under-voltage condition. Also affected were two other generation plants in FPL's system. Total impact to the system was a loss of 3,400 MW of generating capacity.'

face= Bold; H-Engine achieves first firing in Japan. GE Energy'face=-Bold; s first commercial H System gas turbine has achieved first firing at face= Bold; Tokyo Electric Power Co.'face=-Bold; s Futtsu Thermal Power Station. Tepco Futtsu is the first commercial site for GE's most advanced gas turbine combined-cycle system.

Futtsu Thermal Power Station will feature three H Systems, each including GE Energy's 9H gas turbine along with a steam turbine and generator provided by Toshiba under an agreement with GE. The three combined-cycle blocks will enter commercial operation between 2008 and 2010, with a total output of 1,520 MW.

Futtsu Thermal Power Station is the second location where GE Energy's H System gas turbine will be in operation. The world's first 50-Hz 9H combined-cycle system entered service in 2003 at Baglan Bay in South Wales and has surpassed 26,500 operating hours. The first 60-Hz project is the Inland Empire Energy Center in California, scheduled to begin service later this year.