Chattanooga Electrical Engineering News Blog
Topics Related to Electronics and Electrical Engineering
NBCNews.com – Energy, Spencer Kimball (CNBC)
“Renewable energy demand will triple over the next seven years as data center growth accelerates to facilitate the proliferation of artificial intelligence, NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum said Wednesday.
NextEra added 3,000 megawatts of renewable and storage projects to its order backlog in the second quarter. Of those, 860 megawatts — or 28% — come from agreements with Google to power the tech company’s data centers.”
EnergyCentral.com (Daily Energy Insider)
“Entergy Texas said it had updated its application for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program to secure funding for an infrastructure and electrical grid hardening project. Energy applied for $107.5 million in federal grants to improve the resiliency of Port Arthur, Texas’ power grid.
If approved, the funds would help the company improve the resiliency of the power grid in Port Arthur, which have historically been affected by extreme weather events.”
KnoxTNToday.com – Anne Brock (Our Town Outdoors)
“How is solar transforming utility and business decisions in the Tennessee Valley? What policies and trends will affect life here over future decades when it comes to clean energy choices? Industry leaders plan on gathering this fall to tackle the challenges and opportunities at the 2024 Tennessee Valley Solar + Storage Conference.
This conference will be located at the Westin Huntsville in Alabama, in the heart of Tennessee Valley Authority territory. It is organized and hosted by the Tennessee Solar Energy Industries Association (November 20 – 21).”
EnergyCentral.com (source CNBC)
In the U.S., with the increased connections to the power grid by cleaner, greener, carbon-free electric generation, and renewable resources, the FBI has issued a warning for the nations power system. “The federal government is becoming more concerned about vulnerabilities with new energy systems being a target for cyberattacks.”
Adversaries and hackers are looking at potential weaknesses in the power sector with “private and individual owners of renewable power systems.”
With the rising temperatures across most of the US and many cities experiencing over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, stresses the overall electric power grid. Power utilities are experiencing summer peaks in larger electric load demand by keeping up with consumers’ air conditioning units running around the clock.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), one of the nation’s largest utilities, provides electricity across a 7-state region (80,000 square miles) in the Southeast for over 10 million users. TVA has a total generation capacity of 32 gigawatts (GW) with the option to purchase and wheel additional GWs to customers from neighboring utilities. In the past, TVA has experienced winter peak load demands that created system disturbances that resulted in temporary and very short rolling blackouts in some cities/areas to maintain power grid reliability. Temporary load shedding outages were necessary for balancing the system generation capacity with the excessive peak load demand by ultimately protecting the integrity of its entire electric network. Continue Reading…
Moving forward, TVA has spent millions in power grid improvements and efficiency upgrades to support increases in future peak load demand. TVA’s integrated resource plan (IRP) will focus on continued grid improvements with plans to add up to 10 GWs of solar renewable power generation by 2035. Continue Reading…
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released its “2024 Summer Reliability Assessment, “ May 2024, detailing and “identifying areas of concern” for the nations North American power grid during extreme summer conditions. NERC named power regions/entities that may experience power generation capacity shortages during summer peak load demands. Continue Reading…
By UtilityDive.com – Will the power utility, XCEL Energy, have enough power generation capacity by 2030 in time to abolish all of its coal-fired generating plants? Energy regulators are very doubtful that XCEL Energy can achieve this vigorous goal in replenishing enough clean power to offset their reduction in carbon emissions. The fear is: will XCEL approach a power generation shortfall over the next decade to its electric load demand?
“The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission on Jan. 4 asked Xcel Energy to reconsider shuttering its Sherco and King coal-fired power plants, writing that their premature closure adds to the uncertainty of electric generation resource adequacy in the upper Midwest.”