This year’s Coal-Gen 2008 conference in Louisville, Kentucky, was attended by 4,000 members of the power industry. There was so much information at this three-day conference that I thought I’d break my comments into two blog articles: one on the keynote address and another on the CAIR panel. This post focuses on the former, and is the first of two posts.

Common themes quickly emerged, CO2 dominated
I was thankful that the keynote address didn’t start until 10:00 AM, allowing for a bit of a catching up on rest after a busy start to the week and the seemingly ever-worsening travel delays in getting to the conference. Having been with NeuCo since it was a tiny start-up, it was gratifying to see hundreds of attendees streaming into the keynote,...
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Continuing the recent CAIR discussion, here’s a good interview with Jeffrey Holmstead, the former EPA air chief and a primary author of CAIR. In the interview, he talks about how Congress and the EPA should be acting on the decision and the possibility of a settlement or quick legislative remedy.

Holmstead raises an interesting point: Those who challenged CAIR generally agreed with the overall premise and just wanted small tweaks in their favor. Holmstead states: “But the other thing that’s just curious about the ruling is it doesn't make anybody...
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The DC Circuit recently vacated the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). This decision not only suspends tightening federal NOx regulations which seemed so imminent, but it will likely lead to NOx reduction legislation that will be even more stringent and sweeping than CAIR.

Court finds CAIR has “fatal flaws”
The court case that triggered CAIR’s rejection was North Carolina, et al. v. EPA. In its ruling, the court stated: “Because we find more than several fatal flaws in the rule and the [EPA] adopted the rule as one, integral action, we vacate the rule in its entirety and remand to EPA to promulgate a rule that is consistent with this opinion.”

Essentially,...
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My first job in the power industry focused on evaluating the impacts of demand-side management (DSM) programs on the efficiency of electricity usage, overall electricity demand and the economics associated with both. At that time, power companies were not particularly thrilled with the idea of programs that promoted less power consumption.

Fast-forward 25 years: DSM has become a large and growing industry. Today, both the power industry and regulators are pinning their hopes on DSM as a means of maximizing the utilization of existing plants and minimizing the need for new plants. Electricity providers are promoting DSM in concert with new regulatory arrangements that provide financial incentives to increase the efficiency of electricity use, and shift loads from peak demand periods...
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At our recent NOx webcast people asked some good questions and I thought I’d share some of our conversation here. One question that was raised was whether optimization can help generators better deal with peak electricity demand periods. While the answer is a definitive “yes,” I thought it would be useful to broaden the discussion to address both changing load, maximum output, and overcoming capacity constraints. 

Rapid Load Changes
CombustionOpt® has been proven to address changing load, rapid ramping, and units operating under automatic generation control (AGC). Our customers that use CombustionOpt fall into three categories:...
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