Another 14 companies that have developed or plan wind energy projects in New York have signed an ethics code that levies fines for gift-giving to city officials and for other misconduct, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.
The code prohibits companies from hiring municipal employees or their relatives and from providing compensation for municipal approval. It bars companies from giving gifts of more than $10 during a one-year period.
While the code will govern future activity, investigations are ongoing into allegations that developers bribed local officials to push through wind power projects. Cuomo said New York must be equally devoted to clean energy and clean government.
"If we have a complaint from the past, we investigate a complaint," he said. "The code clarifies the rules going forward."
Deputy Attorney General Robin Baker said penalties range up to $50,000 for the first violation and up to $100,000 for subsequent violations. In all, 16 companies have signed the code, representing about 90 percent of the growing industry in New York.
Reunion Power signed the code after initially refusing and then receiving a subpoena.
According to the attorney general's office, 16 wind farms operate in New York and 54 projects or expansions are in the proposal stage.
Paul Copleman, spokesman for Iberdrola Renewables, a co-owner of the 321-megawatt Maple Ridge wind farm with 195 towers on the Tug Hill Plateau in northern New York, said the code "largely reinforces practices we've been engaged in as a developer."
Bruce Power Capacity Uprate boosts nuclear output through generator stator upgrades, turbine and transformer enhancements, and cooling pump improvements at Bruce A and B, unlocking megawatts and efficiency gains from legacy heavy water design capacity.
Key Points
Upgrades that raise Bruce Power capacity via stator, turbine, transformer, and cooling enhancements.
Bruce Power’s Unit 3 nuclear reactor will squeeze out an extra 22 megawatts of electricity, thanks to upgrades during its recent planned outage for refurbishment.
Similar gains are anticipated at its three sister reactors at Bruce A generating station, which presents the opportunity for the biggest efficiency gains and broader economic benefits for Ontario, due to a design difference over Bruce B’s four reactors, Bruce Power spokesman John Peevers said.
Bruce A reactor efficiency gains stem mainly from the fact Bruce A’s non-nuclear side, including turbines and the generator, was sized at 88 per cent of the nuclear capacity, Peevers said, while early Bruce C exploration work advances.
This allowed 12 per cent of the energy, in the form of steam, to be used for heavy water production, which was discontinued at the plant years ago. Heavy water, or deuterium, is used to moderate the reactors.
That design difference left a potential excess capacity that Bruce Power is making use of through various non-nuclear enhancements. But the nuclear operator, which also made major PPE donations during the pandemic, will be looking at enhancements at Bruce B as well, Peevers said.
Bruce Power’s efficiency gain came from “technology advancements,” including a “generator-stator improvement project that was integral to the uprate,” and contributed to an operating record at the site, a Bruce Power news release said July 11.
Peevers said the stationary coils and the associated iron cores inside the generator are referred to as the stator. The stator acts as a conductor for the main generator current, while the turbine provides the mechanical torque on the shaft of the generator.
“Some of the other things we’re working on are transformer replacement and cooling pump enhancements, backed by recent manufacturing contracts, which also help efficiency and contribute to greater megawatt output,” Peevers said.
The added efficiency improvements raised the nuclear operator’s peak generating capacity to 6,430 MW, as projects like Pickering life extensions continue across Ontario.
Our Substation Maintenance Training course is a 12-Hour Live online instruction-led course that will cover the maintenance and testing requirements for common substation facilities, and complements VFD drive training for professionals managing motor control systems.
Electrical Substation maintenance is a key component of any substation owner's electrical maintenance program. It has been well documented that failures in key procedures such as racking mechanisms, meters, relays and busses are among the most common source of unplanned outages. Electrical transmission, distribution and switching substations, as seen in BC Hydro's Site C transmission line work milestone, generally have switching, protection and control equipment and one or more transformers.Our electrical substation maintenance course focuses on maintenance and testing of switchgear, circuit breakers, batteries and protective relays.
This Substation Maintenance Training course will cover the maintenance and testing requirements for common substation devices, including power transformers, oil, air and vacuum circuit breakers, switchgear, ground grid systems aligned with NEC 250 grounding and bonding guidance, batteries, chargers and insulating liquids. This course focuses on what to do, when to do it and how to interpret the results from testing and maintenance. This Substation Maintenance course will deal with all of these important issues.
You Can Access The Live Online Training Through Our Web-Based Platform From Your Own Computer. You Can See And Hear The Instructor And See His Screen Live.
You Can Interact And Ask Questions, similar to our motor testing training sessions delivered online. The Cost Of The Training Also Includes 7 Days Of Email Mentoring With The Instructor.
Maintenance And Testing Methods For Medium-Voltage Circuit Breakers
How To Perform Insulation Resistance, Contact Resistance On Air, Oil And Vacuum Breakers, And Tank Loss Index On Oil Circuit Breaker And Vacuum Bottle Integrity Tests On Vacuum Breaker
How To Perform Switchgear Inspection And Maintenance
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
This course is designed for engineering project managers, engineers, and technicians from utilities who have built or are considering building or retrofitting substations or distribution systems with SCADA and substation integration and automation equipment, and for teams focused on electrical storm safety in the field.
EU Electricity Market Reform seeks to curb gas-driven volatility by expanding CfDs and PPAs, decoupling power from gas, and aligning consumer bills with low-cost renewables and nuclear, as Brussels advances market redesign.
Key Points
An EU plan to curb price spikes by expanding long-term contracts and tying bills to cheap renewables.
✅ Expands CfDs and PPAs to lock in predictable power prices
✅ Aims to decouple bills from gas-driven wholesale volatility
✅ Seeks investment certainty for renewables, nuclear, and grids
European Union energy ministers meet on Monday to debate upcoming power market reforms. Brussels is set to propose the revamp next month, but already countries are split over how to "fix" the energy system - or whether it needs fixing at all.
Here's what you need to know.
POST-CRISIS CHANGES The European Commission pledged last year to reform the EU's electricity market rules, after record-high gas prices - caused by cuts to Russian gas flows - sent power prices soaring during an energy crisis for European companies and citizens.
The aim is to reform the electricity market to shield consumer energy bills from short-term swings in fossil fuel prices, and make sure that Europe's growing share of low-cost renewable electricity translates into lower prices, even though rolling back electricity prices poses challenges for policymakers.
Currently, power prices in Europe are set by the running cost of the plant that supplies the final chunk of power needed to meet overall demand. Often, that is a gas plant, so gas price spikes can send electricity prices soaring.
EU countries disagree on how far the reforms should go.
Spain, France and Greece are among those seeking a deep reform.
In a document shared with EU countries, seen by Reuters, Spain said the reforms should help national regulators to sign more long-term contracts with electricity generators to pay a fixed price for their power.
Nuclear and renewable energy producers, for example, would receive a "contract for difference" (CfD) from the government to provide power during their lifespan - potentially decades - at a stable price that reflects their average cost of production.
Similarly, France suggests, as part of a new electricity pricing scheme, requiring energy suppliers to sign long-term, fixed-price contracts with power generators - either through a CfD, or a private Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between the parties.
French officials say this would give the power plant owner predictable revenue, while enabling consumers to have part of their energy bill comprised of this more stable price.
Germany, Denmark, Latvia and four other countries oppose a deep reform, and, as nine EU countries oppose reforms overall, have warned the EU against a "crisis mode" overhaul of a complex system that has taken decades to develop.
They say Europe's existing power market is functioning well, and has fostered years of lower power prices, supported renewable energy and helped avoid energy shortages.
Those countries support only limited tweaks, such as making it easier for consumers to choose between fluctuating and fixed-price power contracts.
'DECOUPLE' PRICES? The Commission initially pitched the reform as a chance to "decouple" gas and power prices in Europe, suggesting a redesign of the current system of setting power prices. But EU officials say Brussels now appears to be leaning towards more modest changes.
A public consultation on the reforms last month steered clear of a deep energy market intervention. Rather, it suggested expanding Europe's use of long-term contracts, outlining a plan for more fixed-price contracts that provide power plants with a fixed price for their electricity, like CfDs or PPAs.
The Commission said this could be done by setting EU-wide rules for CfDs and letting countries voluntarily use them, or require new state-funded power plants to sign CfDs. The consultation mooted the idea of forcing existing power plants to sign CfDs, but said this could deter much-needed investments in renewable energy.
RISKS, REWARDS Pro-reform countries like Spain say a revamped power market will bring down energy prices for consumers, by matching their bills more closely with the true cost of producing lower-carbon electricity.
France says the aim is to secure investment in low-carbon energy including renewables, and nuclear plants like those Paris plans to build. It also says lowering power prices should be part of Europe's response to massive industrial subsidies in the United States and China - by helping European firms keep a competitive edge.
But sceptics warn that drastic changes to the market could knock confidence among investors, putting at risk the hundreds of billions of euros in renewable energy investments the EU says are needed to quit Russian fossil fuels under its plan to dump Russian energy and meet climate goals.
Energy companies including Engie (ENGIE.PA), Orsted (ORSTED.CO) and Iberdrola (IBE.MC) have said making CfDs mandatory or imposing them retroactively on existing power plants could deter investment and trigger litigation from energy companies.
POLITICAL DEBATE EU countries' energy ministers discuss the reforms on Monday, before formal negotiations begin.
The Commission, which drafts EU laws, plans to propose the reforms on Mar. 14. After that, EU countries and lawmakers negotiate the final law, which must win majority support from European Parliament lawmakers and a reinforced majority of at least 15 countries.
Negotiations on major EU legislation often take more than a year, but some countries are pushing for a fast-tracked deal. France wants the law to be finished this year.
That has already hit resistance from countries like Germany, highlighting a France-Germany tussle over the scope of reform as they say deeper changes cannot be rushed through, and they would need an "in-depth impact assessment" - something the Commission's upcoming proposal is not expected to include, because it has been drafted so quickly.
The timeline is further complicated by European Parliament elections in 2024. That has raised concerns in reform-hungry states that failure to strike a deal before the election could significantly delay the reforms, if negotiations have to pause until a new EU parliament is elected.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
EU Nuclear Power Dispute strains electricity market reform as Germany resists state aid for French reactors, while Eon urges cooperation to meet the energy transition, low-carbon goals, renewables integration, and cross-border power trade.
Key Points
A policy standoff between Germany and France over nuclear energy's role, state aid, and electricity market reforms.
✅ Germany opposes state aid for existing French nuclear plants.
✅ Eon CEO urges compromise to advance market reform and decarbonization.
✅ Cross-border trade shows reliance on French nuclear amid renewables push.
Germany should stop trying to impose its views on nuclear power on the rest of the EU, the head of one of Europe’s largest utilities has warned, as he stressed its importance in the region’s clean energy transition.
Leonhard Birnbaum, chief executive of German energy provider Eon, said Berlin should accept differences of opinion as he signalled his desire for a compromise with France to break a deadlock amid a nuclear power dispute over energy reforms.
Germany this year shut down its final three nuclear power plants as it followed through on a long-held promise to drop the use of the energy source, effectively turning its back on nuclear for now, while France has made it a priority to modernise its nuclear power plants.
The differences are delaying reforms to the region’s electricity market and legislation designed to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets.
One sticking point is Germany’s refusal to back French moves to allow governments to provide state aid to existing power plants, which could enable Paris to support the French nuclear fleet.
The Eon chief, whose company has 48mn customers across Europe, said it would be “better for everyone” if the two countries could approach the dispute with the mindset that “everyone does their part”, even as Germany has at times weighed a U-turn on the nuclear phaseout in recent debates.
“Neither the French will be able to persuade us to use nuclear power, nor we will be able to persuade them not to. That’s why I think we should take a different approach to the discussion,” he added.
Birnbaum said Germany “would do well to be a bit cautious about trying to impose our way on everyone else”. This approach was unlikely to be “crowned with success”.
“The better solution will not come from opposing each other, but from working together.”
Birnbaum made the comments at a press conference announcing Eon’s second-quarter results.
The company raised its profit outlook, predicting adjusted net income of €2.7bn to €2.9bn, and promised to reduce bills for customers as it hailed “diminishing headwinds” following the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.
Birnbaum, whose company owned one of the three German nuclear plants shut down this year, pointed out that French nuclear energy was helping the conversion to a system of renewable energy in Germany at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power just when it needs energy.
This was a reference to Europe’s shared power market that allows countries to buy and sell electricity from one another.
Germany has been a net importer of French electricity since shutting down its own nuclear plants, which last month prompted the French energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher to accuse Berlin of hypocrisy.
“It’s a contradiction to massively import French nuclear energy while rejecting every piece of EU legislation that recognises the value of nuclear as a low-carbon energy source,” Pannier-Runacher told the German business daily Handelsblatt.
She also criticised Berlin’s drive to use new gas-fired power plants as a “bridge” to its target of being carbon neutral by 2045, even as some German officials contend that nuclear won’t solve the gas issue in the near term, arguing that it created a “credibility problem” for Germany: “Gas is a fossil fuel.”
Berlin officials responded by pointing out that Germany was a net exporter of electricity to France over the winter when its nuclear power stations were struggling to produce because of maintenance problems.
They added that the country only imported French power because it was cheaper, not because their country was suffering shortages.
Berlin argues that renewable energy is cleaner and safer than nuclear, despite renewable rollout challenges linked to cheap Russian gas and grid expansion, and accuses France of seeking to protect the interests of its nuclear industry.
In Paris, officials see Germany’s resistance to nuclear energy as wrong-headed given the need to fight climate change effectively, and worry it is an attempt to undercut a key aspect of French industrial competitiveness.
BC Hydro Rate Freeze delivers immediate relief on electricity rates in British Columbia, reversing a planned 3% hike, as BCUC oversight, a utility review, and Site C project debates shape provincial energy policy.
Key Points
A one-year provincial policy halting BC Hydro electricity rate hikes while a utility review finds cost savings.
✅ Freeze replaces planned 3% hike approved by BCUC.
✅ Government to conduct comprehensive BC Hydro review.
✅ Critics warn $150M revenue loss impacts capital projects.
British Columbia's NDP government has announced it will freeze BC Hydro rates effective immediately, fulfilling a key election promise.
Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Michelle Mungall says hydro rates have gone up by more than 24 per cent in the last four years and by more than 70 per cent since 2001, reflecting proposals such as a 3.75% increase over two years announced previously.
"After years of escalating electricity costs, British Columbians deserve a break on their bills," Mungall said in a news release.
BC Hydro had been approved by the B.C. Utilities Commission to increase the rate by three per cent next year, but Mungall said it will pull back its request in order to comply with the freeze.
In the meantime, the government says it will undertake a comprehensive review of the utility meant to identify cost-savings measures for customers often asked to pay an extra $2 a month on electricity bills.
The Liberal critic, Tracy Redies, says the one year rate freeze is going to cost BC Hydro, calling it a distraction from the bigger issue of the future of the Site C project and the oversight of a BC Hydro fund surplus as well.
"A one year rate freeze costs Hydro $150 million," Redies said. "That means there's $150 million less to invest in capital projects and other investments that the utility needs to make."
"This is putting off decisions that should be made today to the future."
Recommendations from the review — including possible new rates — will be implemented starting in April 2019.
