Photo Courtesy of Penn State University / Steven Rubin Firms say the transmission build-out across the U.S. will take years to design and build. The U.S. transmission-line construction business is in the early stages of what may well turn out to be a 10- or even 20-year boom, according to transmission designers, contractors, electric utilities and independent transmission companies.“We're looking at a decade or more of double-digit annual growth in power delivery services,” which includes work not only transmission lines but also on substations and lower-voltage distribution lines, says Don Mundy, senior vice president in Overland Park, Kan.-based Black &
Photo Courtesy of Rangeland Energy Rangeland Energy is building North Dakotas first open-access, crude-oil terminal, which will accommodate 120-car unit trains and be capable of moving 80,000 barrels per day by rail. Related Links: Shale Gas Major Driver For New Projects Some say it is the biggest construction project in the U.S.—a job requiring $8 billion in rail and fuel terminals, oil pipelines, natural-gas plants, oil wells, highway upgrades, water distribution systems and more.To others, it is the Bakken shale formation, a 15,000-sq-mile oil field straddling North Dakota and Montana and producing 300,000 barrels per day of crude oil. Its
Although many large engineering, procurement and construction, or EPC, firms in the petroleum sector are still building backlog and revenues on international jobs, traditional upstream and downstream opportunities in the U.S. remain largely in a slump. Still, many U.S.-based firms are bullish on work in Canada and South America.Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corp. is near the end of a strong streak of U.S. refinery work won in recent years, including a $3.8-billion job for BP America at its Whiting, Ind., refinery, $1.6 billion in work in Detroit for Marathon Oil and $1.2 billion for two projects in Texas and Louisiana for
PHOTO COURTESY OF London Array Ltd. Competition in New England and revived interest in Texas are perking up wind market. Government streamlining of leases for Rhode Island and Massachusetts and changing market conditions in Texas are breathing new life into offshore wind projects in those states.On Aug. 18, Winchester, Mass.-based Neptune Wind announced it plans to develop, construct and operate a 500-MW wind farm about 20 nautical miles south of the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border. The announcement came a day after U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation
Routine work on a substation apparently led to a power outage that left more than 1.4 million customers – about 5 million people – without power for 12 hours Sept. 8 and 9 in Southern California,Arizona and Mexico.According to the Arizona Public Service, the outage began about 3:30 p.m. PDT Thursday when a major 500-kV line from Arizona to Southern California tripped off. The outage forced the automatic shut down of the San Onofre Generating Station, a nuclear powerplant. The powerplant and power imported from Arizona on the 500-kV line are the region’s primary sources of power. Without that electricity,
On Aug. 26, the U.S. State Dept. issued the final environmental impact statement on TransCanada’s 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, setting the final stage for the hotly contested battle over the line that would move Canadian tar-sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico for refining.
Utilities up and down the East Coast were rapidly making progress on restoring power to the up to 7.5 million homes and businesses that were reported without electricity after Hurricane Irene struck over the weekend.No major damage was reported at East Coast power plants, but Constellation’s Energy’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear Unit #1 remained shut down after a piece of aluminum siding struck a transformer there. All nuclear plants in the path of the storm continued operating or safely shutdown in advance of the storm, according to reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Connecticut Light & Power reported having record outages in
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors voted unanimously Thursday to complete construction of the mothballed 1,200-MW Bellefonte nuclear unit 1 over the objections of environmentalists who said that it is unsafe to complete the unit, which has been dormant since 1988.“You’re forcing questionable technology into an old, aging facility,” said John Noel, of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy at the meeting on Thursday. But board members said their concerns had been alleviated after TVA staff and executives assured them the unit would undergo rigorous inspections and have to meet the latest standards and regulations.TVA estimates it will cost
Courtesy FERC FERC Order 1000 requires providers in neighboring transmission planning regions to coordinate on finding cost-effective solutions to mutual transmission needs. Related Links: Power Producers Validate One Bright Spot in Midyear Outlook FERC Floats Rule Changes To Promote Transmission A July 21 ruling by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that reforms electric-transmission planning and allocation requirements is expected to support new solar- and wind-power development, according to two construction industry sources.“FERC Order 1000 is a huge development that will open up the transmission cost allocation process and spur development of transmission projects,” says Gerald Schulz, vice president of electrical
Related Links: Drilling for Treasure Hydrofracking and Water: No Place for Secrecy A Dept. of Energy advisory panel says that it accepts the “prevailing” view that hydraulic fracturing for shale gas is unlikely to contaminate drinking water sources, but called for the government and industry to take steps to ensure that the gas is retrieved in a way that minimizes negative environmental impacts. In draft recommendations released on August 11, the Shale Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board called for industry leadership in improving environmental performance, underpinned by strong regulations and rigorous enforcement of those regulations.The subcommittee was