Tucson, Ariz., secured federal funding for an ambitious project to build an electrically powered streetcar with the approval of a $63-million grant through the Federal Transit Administration. Officials with the city’s transportation department finalized the paperwork for the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) funds on Dec. 28. The move protects the project’s funding from congressional stimulus cuts, they say. The city now must find a way to close the $26-million funding gap for the project. The city must close a $26-million funding gap. Tucson also is awaiting FTA’s approval of an environmental assessment, required before grant funds can be
New York City-based Verdant Power has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a pilot license to install 30 propeller-like turbines in the east channel of the East River in New York City that could generate up to 1 MW of hydropower. Verdant expects to have the license within six to 12 months. After securing the license, it will install the grid-connected Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy system, says Trey Taylor, co-founder and president of Verdant. Though Verdant calls the system a tidal system, the power is generated from the flow of the river, not the ebb and flow of
Maryland and New Jersey officials, worried about the high cost of electricity and predictions of limited supplies, are giving up on the established system and seeking to construct their own powerplants. The Maryland Public Service Commission on Dec. 29 issued a draft request for proposals for up to 1,800 MW of new generation in or around Maryland. The final RFP is expected in March. A week earlier New Jersey Board of Public Utilities President Lee Solomon said the board had started seeking new base-load generation in that state. The New Jersey Legislature was poised to pass a bill that would
A Dept. of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report released in December shows that, after remaining virtually unchanged from 2008 to 2009, the price of installed solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S. declined sharply in 2010. Photo Courtesy U.S. DOE Government subsidies spur market growth and demand in the U.S., as in Spain and Germany. “PV has priced itself into the market and is now competitive with other renewables,” says Art Larson, a spokesman for San Diego Gas and Electric. The utility signed its first three PV projects in 2010. A total of 305 MW of PV will
Texas is poised for an unprecedented boom in the construction of high-voltage transmission lines. Photo: Courtesy of U.S. DOE The Lone Star State is reviewing $9 billion worth of transmission-line projects. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is reviewing some $9 billion in transmission projects that would add 7,866 miles of new lines in west Texas, the Texas panhandle and other parts of the state over the next five years, ERCOT says in planning reports filed on Dec. 30 at the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). The planned projects include more than 2,000 miles of new 345-kV transmission lines
Colombian crews have closed two-thirds of a large levee-canal breach that opened on Nov. 30 and spilled millions of gallons of Magdalena River water across vast sections of the country’s coastal plain. The disastrous flooding, worsened by persistent rainfall, has killed several hundred people, left millions homeless and resulted in billions of dollars in property damage to the South American nation. Photo: Vali Cooper International, LLC/BAR The site of Colombian towns flooded to the rafters recalls visions of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans in 2005 and, at least in the case of the Dique Canal breach, the silent risk levees
A 55-in.-dia cut into a rebar-reinforced underground concrete tank with hardened nuclear waste, the largest slice ever into such a U.S. Energy Dept. storage structure, went “perfectly” on Dec. 19, says a site cleanup official. Photo: Courtesy of U.S. Energy Dept. Crew lifts an underground concrete waste tank’s plug—wrapped in protective plastic to avoid contamination spread during operation—to install a robotic waste removal arm. In what may become the norm at DOE’s Hanford site in eastern Washington state and possibly at other U.S. waste sites, crews from Boston-based AK Services used a pressurized mix of garnet and water to methodically
Texas could become the nation’s leader in clean-coal technology, with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently giving its approval to three such projects. The powerplants, though, face some opposition from neighbors opposed to the new coal plants—clean or not. Map: Sue Pearsall for ENR Three clean-coal projects are estimated at nearly $8 billion in construction costs. On Dec. 14, the TCEQ gave an air-quality permit to Omaha, Neb.-based Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center, allowing it to build a 600-MW, $3.5-billion clean-coal powerplant in Penwell. On Dec. 29, the state agency granted an air-quality permit to the Summit Power Group of
Colombian crews have closed two-thirds of a large levee canal breach that opened Nov. 30 and spilled millions of gallons of Magdalena River water across vast sections of the country's coastal plain. The disastrous flooding, worsened by persistent rainfall, has killed several hundred people, left millions homeless and resulted in billions of dollars in property damage to the South American nation. Relief crews on Dec. 27 reported success in closing 178 meters of the the 258-m-wide breach in the Dique Canal, although they warn that the remaining 80 m is the most technically difficult part of the closure operation. Water
RSS
