Archive for category: General Information

Three Mile Island, the site of worst nuclear disaster in the United States, is reopening and will exclusively sell the power to Microsoft as the company searches for energy sources to fuel its AI ambitions.

Constellation Energy announced Friday that its Unit 1 reactor, which closed five years ago, is expected to be revived in 2028, dependent on Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval. Microsoft will purchase the carbon-free energy produced from it to power its data centers to support artificial intelligence.

Financial terms of the 20-year agreement, which Constellation called its largest ever, weren’t disclosed.

“Powering industries critical to our nation’s global economic and technological competitiveness, including data centers, requires an abundance of energy that is carbon-free and reliable every hour of every day, and nuclear plants are the only energy sources that can consistently deliver on that promise,” said Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez in a press release.

Clean energy advocates and businesses alike are looking towards nuclear energy as a source of zero-carbon power that is a reliable baseload source. A big pro is that nuclear is able to stay on at all times of the day and night, unlike wind and solar.

However, nuclear has drawn criticism for environmental groups for decades for its waste. The US still has no permanent repository for that waste, instead storing it at over 70 operating and shuttered plants around the nation.

Reopening of the Unit 1 reactor will add 3,400 direct and indirect jobs and add more than 800 megawatts of electricity to the grid, according to Constellation. It’s also expected to add $16 billion to Pennsylvania’s GDP, where the plant is located.

Shares of Constellation (CEG) soared more than 16% in midday trading.

Three Mile Island, located near Harrisburg, is best known for being the most serious accident at a commercial nuclear power plant in US history when it experienced the partial meltdown of one of its two reactors. Unit 2 reactor, which is adjacent to Unit 1, has remained closed since 1979 following the disaster.

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On September 13, 2024 the City of Ottawa held a designation ceremony at the city’s auditorium. Their combined cycle turbine was designated as a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) recognizing its pivotal role in the evolution of combined cycle power plants.

The combined cycle was the world’s first pre-engineered gas-turbine to enter service. It was the first of only two STAG 103s (steam and gas) made by GE. The second was installed by the City of Hutchinson, Minnesota in 1971. Ottawa logged only about 11,000 operating hours after hitting its 100,000-hr milestone at the end of 1993. This industry icon was retired in place in 2020, after spending two decades in standby service. It was started periodically for training and equipment-preservation purposes. Hutchinson’s STAG 103 was taken out of service in 2019 and now is being dismantled.

The ceremony was well attended and afterwards a tour of the power plant was provided where everyone got to see the STAG unit.

On August 26th, effective at 12:30 p.m., the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) announced an Energy Emergency Alert Level 1 (EEA 1) due to the forecast of high peak loads caused by high temperatures, an increase in resource outages, and low output from wind and other variable energy resources (also known as a low VER forecast) leading into the peak hours for the day. An EEA 1 declaration does not require the public to conserve energy and does not indicate that SPP will be directing controlled service outages. Instead, an EEA 1 is an indication that while SPP has enough generation available to meet demand and fulfill its reserve obligations, conditions exist that could put reserves at risk if they worsen.

Once notified, the KMEA 24-hour Operations group relayed the grid condition to all KMEA cities via email and additionally began contacting by phone all cities with non-registered generation to make them aware of the possibilities of dispatches. All of our registered generation was either online or dispatched for future hours of the day.

According to KMEA Operations Director Tom Saitta, “All our member cities asked to run did not hesitate, and all others stood ready to help. Our cities’ generation performed great with over 100 MW of generation at peak.”

SPP ended the EEA event at 3:00 p.m. with no non-registered generation being dispatched. In total, KMEA member cities generated approximately 503 MWh with a peak generation of 101 MW.

LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — At their August 5-6 meetings, Southwest Power Pool’s (SPP) Regional State Committee and Board of Directors approved increases to the planning reserve margins (PRM) member utilities are required to maintain in support of regional grid reliability. PRM represents the amount of back-up power utilities must have to guard against unplanned conditions or events on the regional power grid.

SPP’s action will further help the region prepare for extreme weather events and other circumstances that lead to higher-than-usual demand for electricity. Such episodes have become increasingly common in recent years, such as with Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and Winter Storm Elliott in 2022.

SPP’s Regional State Committee and board approved minimum requirements of a 36% winter-season PRM and a 16% summer-season PRM, effective beginning summer 2026 and winter 2026/27. This means that load responsible entities in SPP’s region must have access to enough generating capacity to serve their peak consumption with at least 36% margin during the winter season and at least 16% margin during the summer.

This action marks the first time a winter PRM requirement has been defined separately from SPP’s summer PRM requirement and was taken to ensure member utilities appropriately acquire enough generating capacity for both seasons. The current 15% summer PRM requirement was previously applied to the winter season also. The new requirements support SPP’s efforts to reliably and continuously meet the region-wide demand for electricity from residents, commercial centers and industries throughout the SPP footprint.

The board also received a report detailing the challenges SPP and its members face with the increasing risk of having inadequate electricity supply to meet demand. The report, titled Our Generational Challenge: A Reliable Future for Electricity, is a comprehensive summary of SPP’s work to leverage diverse energy resources to meet the ever-rising demand for electricity. It calls for increased engagement, collaboration and consensus among government energy regulators, elected policymakers, utilities, regional transmission organizations and customers.

“As the real-time grid operator and transmission planner for a 14-state region, our job is to ensure electric reliability for millions of consumers. We’ve been successfully doing this work since 1941. But we can’t do it alone. A concerted, collective effort is needed to ensure we have a reliable power grid today and in the future,” said SPP Chief Executive Officer Barbara Sugg in the report’s opening statement. The report and an infographic are available at spp.org/ourchallenge. Sugg further pointed out that SPP is increasingly forced to issue grid advisories in winter and summer due to the heightened risk of inadequate power supplies during those times. She said harnessing enough energy to meet demand has become more and more complicated due to the rapidly evolving power grid. “Demand for electricity is outpacing supply from our generation fleet,” Sugg said. “While SPP always focuses on affordability, we need continued investment to add the generating and transmission facilities needed to mitigate risks and keep the lights on.”

About SPP: Southwest Power Pool, Inc. is a regional transmission organization: a not-for-profit corporation mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure and competitive wholesale electricity prices on behalf of its members in 14 states. SPP ensures electric reliability across a region spanning parts of the central and western U.S., provides energy services on a contract basis to customers in both the Eastern and Western Interconnections, and is expanding its RTO and developing a day-ahead energy market in the west. The company’s headquarters are in Little Rock, Arkansas. Learn more at SPP.org