Latest news with #electricgrid
Washington Post
30-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Puerto Rico's governor pledges to improve island's power grid and economy
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico's governor pledged Thursday to improve the island's crumbling electric grid and boost the economy in her first address after being elected last year as anger intensifies over chronic power outages and an increase in cost-of-living expenses. Gov. Jenniffer González Colón, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, spoke for nearly two hours as she listed her accomplishments since taking office in January and announced multimillion-dollar investments to improve Puerto Rico's health, education and public safety.
Associated Press
30-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Puerto Rico's governor pledges to improve island's power grid and economy
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico's governor pledged Thursday to improve the island's crumbling electric grid and boost the economy in her first address after being elected last year as anger intensifies over chronic power outages and an increase in cost-of-living expenses. Gov. Jenniffer González Colón, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, spoke for nearly two hours as she listed her accomplishments since taking office in January and announced multimillion-dollar investments to improve Puerto Rico's health, education and public safety. 'Without a doubt, the road has been difficult and full of lessons that we must ensure we don't repeat,' she said. González Colón said the upcoming budget includes funds to hire 800 new police officers, $12 million to hire new firefighters and $24 million to recruit resident doctors as health professionals continue to move to the U.S. mainland, leaving Puerto Rico with few or no specialists in certain areas. She noted that more than 60%, or roughly $8 billion, of the upcoming general fund budget is slated for health, education and public safety. The budget has not yet been approved. María de Lourdes Santiago, vice president of Puerto Rico's Independence Party, said after the governor's address that the numbers announced are not sufficient given that thousands of certain government employees, including police officers, are needed. González Colón, a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, decried federal bureaucracy during her address, noting her administration would keep pushing to free some $18 billion in federal funds set aside to improve Puerto Rico's power grid, which Hurricane Maria razed in September 2017 as a Category 4 storm. She also renewed her pledge to cancel the government's contract with Luma Energy, a private company that oversees the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico. 'The termination of this contract will be a reality,' she said as supporters stood up and applauded. González Colón said reliable power is essential to attract investment as she promised to keep attracting more manufacturing to Puerto Rico. In upcoming months, she said she would announce the expansion of five industries on the island. The length of her address and the speed at which she sometimes delivered it surprised some. Political analyst and university professor Jorge Schmidt Nieto said it seemed like a ploy to distract those who have criticized her administration of inaction and the government of so far not approving many laws. 'She tried to bring an optimistic tone because she knows she has received a lot of criticism,' Schmidt Nieto said. Another who criticized González was Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress and president of the opposition Popular Democratic Party: 'If one word describes the start of this government, that word is disorder.' He noted that in the past five months, González has presented three candidates for Puerto Rico's secretary of state, two candidates for its justice department and another two candidates for its labor department. None of those positions have been filled as González's party has failed so far to approve her nominees.
Forbes
22-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
How AI And A Stiff Breeze Vitalize Our Aging Grid
A worker installing a LineVision DLR sensor on a sub-transmission tower After decades of flat to declining electrical utility demand, customers are suddenly clamoring for more power. AI data centers have driven that demand, but home electrification and EVs have also boosted the electric load on our aging grid. Utilities' present infrastructures are based on 10-year-old plans that didn't foresee this surge in demand. Building new power plants or stringing miles of new transmission lines doesn't happen overnight, so utilities are scrambling to do more with less. Boston start-up LineVision and several European competitors are leveraging a new technology called dynamic line ratings to help utilities do more with less. DLR systems allow grid operators to increase the current flowing through high-voltage transmission lines like the ones pictured below. A transmission line in Waikanae, north of Wellington, New Zealand. The difference between current and voltage can be visualized by a conveyor belt carrying boxes of a uniform size. The fixed box size represents voltage, while the speed of the conveyor belt represents current. To deliver more boxes in the same amount of time, you increase the speed of the conveyor belt. The same is true for electrical generation. Generation facilities respond to increased demand by producing more power and sending it through transmission wires at a constant voltage, but higher current. If electrical grids were conveyor belts, it would be easy to just boost the amperage (another word for current, which is measured in amperes) flowing through the lines. However, as current increases, transmission lines heat up and sag due to thermal expansion. Sagging places a strain on transmission towers and, if severe enough, might cause lines to brush against vegetation, sparking fires (read my article PG&E: The First S&P 500 Climate Change Casualty). The sun's heat causes lines to sag more on sunny days, while increased airflow on windy days cools the lines, which sag less. Industry conservatism and the threat of wildfire-related lawsuits prompt grid operators to keep transmission currents low to prevent excessive line sagging. This conservatism is warranted on hot, still summer days when everyone is cranking up their air conditioning, but such caution often restricts the amount of electricity available to customers. DLR systems signal grid operators to throttle back on the current on sunny, still days and crank up the current when demand spikes on cool, cloudy, windy days. A solar powered DLR device from LineVision installed on a transmission tower Such slight adjustments might seem trivial, but DLR systems enable amazing capacity increases. A brisk wind allows 50-100%+ amperage increases over static assumptions on a case-by-case basis, leading to average grid-wide capacity increases of around 40%. Replicating such increases over the entire 700,000-mile grid network could result in enormous economic benefits. Increased 'ampacity' (i.e., current capacity) reduces the demand for new generation facilities and transmission lines, clears transmission bottlenecks, increases the grid's capacity for cheap renewable energy, and helps grids re-energize faster after equipment failures. The pioneer of DLR systems is Ampacimon, a Belgian company spun out of a university in 2010. Its devices are installed directly onto transmission lines, deriving power from the lines' electromagnetic field. The devices sense determinants such as wind vibrations and the lines' temperature, then use theoretical models to infer from measured inputs and local weather reports how much sagging is likely to occur, which they report to the grid operator in real-time via cellular links. Heimdall Power, a Norwegian company founded in 2016, applied a twist to Ampacimon's model. Heimdall's devices are installed onto transmission lines via drone and operate on harvested electric power. However, rather than using theoretical models, Heimdall's devices are equipped with MEMS chips and accelerometers, the sensors in your phone which measure movement and relative position to the earth. The devices infer from this location data the sag across the span to which they are attached. You can learn more about Heimdall's solution here. Ampacimon's devices originally required that power to the lines be shut off for installation, but now both they and Heimdall's devices can be installed on live transmission wires, making installation less disruptive. LineVision is the only DLR company to implement direct sag and temperature measurements using LIDAR, electromagnetic field sensors, and AI-powered visual imaging. LineVision sensors attach to towers rather than the lines themselves and are powered by solar cells and batteries, enabling the system to estimate line capacity when a grid goes down and is attempting to restart. Sensor installation is quicker and easier on towers than on lines, cutting capital costs. LineVision's software uses AI to monitor line conditions and integrates local weather forecasts to predict future line conditions, then conveys capacity recommendations to grid operators. National Grid, a U.K.-based utility with operations in the U.K. and New York State, estimated that LineVision's DLR has generated over £1 billion in transmission grid congestion reductions and upgrade deferrals. We are putting an enormous burden on our aging grid, which is comprised in many regions of lines older than 30 years on average. I believe that power generation and distribution in the post-Climate world will require a complete rethink of the Industrial Revolution paradigm by which we built our present grid, but even a modern, distributed grid will need a strong, efficient transmission network. Dynamic line ratings, powered by modern sensors, AI and an occasional stiff breeze, are a critical advantage. Intelligent investors take note.
Forbes
16-05-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Spain's Train Crisis Was A Wake-Up Call. Could Hydrail Trains Be The Answer?
People wait outside the Atocha train station in Madrid after its closure as a massive power outage ... More hits Spain on April 28, 2025. Power went out across all of Spain and Portugal today, cutting cellphone and internet networks, halting trains and trapping people in elevators, officials said. The operator, Red Electrica, said it would likely take six to 10 hours to restore power in the country and urged people not to speculate as to the cause of the outage. (Photo by Thomas COEX / AFP) (Photo by THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images) In the middle of the day on 28 April 2025, Spain lived a modern replay of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. In the film, paternalistic aliens cut electricity worldwide to force humanity to reconsider its nuclear arms race. In Spain's case, there were no aliens—just an all-too-human failure in the electric grid. But the result was eerily similar: everything stopped. Like much of Europe, Spain's rail system still depends on 19th-century overhead electrification—a technology first developed in Tsarist Russia. What once marked a leap in industrial modernity has become an ageing and increasingly fragile network. A single fault in the grid, even hundreds of kilometres away, can bring entire train systems to a halt. That April day in Spain, it did exactly that. Passengers stranded in the open countryside were the lucky ones. Those caught in tunnels faced a darker, more claustrophobic ordeal. But this high-profile failure has cast new light on an alternative Spain has been quietly exploring for almost two decades: hydrail, or hydrogen-powered rail. Unlike conventional electric trains that depend on external power lines, hydrail carries its energy onboard in the form of compressed or liquid hydrogen. No wires. No dependency on the grid. Just trains that keep moving—even when everything else doesn't. Widespread adoption of hydrail would have made the April paralysis all but impossible. More than that, it would represent a significant leap in energy diversification and resilience—two things climate-stressed infrastructure now urgently needs. Spain wasn't caught entirely off guard. In fact, it was one of the first countries to seriously explore hydrogen-powered rail. In 2006, Dr Carlos Navas attended the Second International Hydrail Conference in Herning, Denmark. Two years later, he hosted the Fourth Conference in Valencia. By 2011, Spain's narrow-gauge operator FEVE had already demonstrated a hydrogen tram in the Principality of Asturias—years ahead of similar efforts in China or Germany. Today, Spain is set to lead again. A recent breakthrough positions the country to pioneer high-speed hydrail. The driver? Economics. With low population density in many regions, Spain faces some of the highest per-passenger track electrification costs in Europe: "Very roughly," says Stan Thompson, co-founder of the Mooresville Hydrail Initiative, 'in US dollars, the capital cost of new track electrification is around $15 milion per track mile.' Hydrail, by contrast, offers a cheaper and more flexible solution that sidesteps the need for costly fixed-line electrification. Spain is not alone. Germany is already running the Saltzgitter-built Coradia iLint. China has deployed hydrogen trams in Foshan. And this summer, the first U.S. hydrogen passenger line opens in California between San Bernardino and Redlands. TOPSHOT - Passengers wait along a platform to board a train at Santa Justa railway station in ... More Seville on April 29, 2025, the day after a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France. Electricity was restored to almost all of Spain and Portugal on April 29 morning, allowing a gradual return to normal life in the two countries, which were hit on April 28 by a giant blackout that lasted up to ten or even twenty hours depending on the region. The return of power has enabled rail traffic to be restored on several major routes, including Madrid-Seville and Madrid-Barcelona, according to the national company Renfe. However, traffic remains suspended on several other major routes, as the authorities have given priority to restoring suburban trains. (Photo by CRISTINA QUICLER / AFP) (Photo by CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP via Getty Images) Thompson – the man who coined the term 'hydrail' in 2003 – sees the writing on the wall for traditional electrification. 'With the soaring cost of copper as we 'electrify everything,' the old model is becoming unsustainable,' he says. New overhead lines are not only expensive to install—they're also costly to maintain, at roughly $150,000 per mile per year. As long as the global push for electrification continues, copper is expected to remain a strategic bottleneck—and a rising cost factor in infrastructure projects like electrified rail. Copper prices are hitting record highs in 2025 due to unprecedented demand from the global energy transition, technological advancements, and infrastructure upgrades, all while supply growth is hampered by production challenges and slow mine development. Geopolitical uncertainty and trade policies are adding to the price volatility and upward pressure. In a copper-scarce world, hydrail offers unique advantages: hydrail systems use substantially less copper than traditional electrified rail because they eliminate the need for copper-intensive trackside power delivery systems. Copper use is largely limited to the train itself, making hydrail a less copper-dependent technology for rail transport. And Thompson believes that salvaging copper from existing electrified corridors may help finance the switch to hydrogen. 'When the first two or three overhead systems have gone hydrail,' Thompson predicts, 'the rest will come down like dominoes.' Slow dominoes, perhaps—but the 140-year lifespan of aging rail infrastructure is looking increasingly hard to justify. And beyond cost, overhead train power has other drawbacks. Utility engineers aren't fans—ground currents from the lines can interfere with water systems, telecoms, and other underground infrastructure. City planners, too, have long been frustrated. Despite years of effort to bury power lines and telephone cables, railway corridors remain cluttered with conspicuous poles, wires, and metalwork. People leave the Atocha train station in Madrid after its closure as a massive power outage hits ... More Spain on April 28, 2025. Power went out across all of Spain and Portugal today, cutting cellphone and internet networks, halting trains and trapping people in elevators, officials said. The operator, Red Electrica, said it would likely take six to 10 hours to restore power in the country and urged people not to speculate as to the cause of the outage. (Photo by Thomas COEX / AFP) (Photo by THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images) Curiously, the story of hydrail's potential to ride out power grid failures begins in the United States. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Congress funded development of the first hydrail locomotive under the George W. Bush administration. Built by BNSF Railways and Vehicle Projects LLC, the train wasn't just intended for freight—it was designed as a self-propelled mobile power plant, capable of supplying emergency electricity to hospitals and other critical infrastructure after natural disasters like hurricanes. Its tractive power was successfully demonstrated on military bases in the Western U.S., but after the Bush presidency ended, so did government support. The locomotive—BNSF 1205—was scrapped for parts and now sits on display, minus its hydrogen components, at the Oklahoma Railway Museum. But in 2025, Thompson believes the transition to onboard hydrogen-sourced electric power is inevitable, beginning with lighter equipment and shorter rail lines. As copper prices rise and aging infrastructure reaches the end of its life, the economic case for gridless rail becomes increasingly compelling. A technology first imagined to keep the lights on during crises may now help avoid them altogether. But only time will tell the extent to which hydrail becomes the new norm beyond its current early use-cases in California, Germany and China. If Spain stays the course, it could be the first to show that hydrail isn't a far-off future. It's already on track.
Associated Press
13-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Entergy Grid Renewal Projects Full Steam Ahead During National Infrastructure Week
Company plans to invest $37 billion in the electric grid through 2028 May 12-16 marks National Infrastructure Week, but for Entergy employees, it seems like the observance is celebrated daily. Throughout the company's service area, a dizzying number of projects are being planned, designed, approved, built and put into service. These projects will improve resiliency, enhance reliability, supply economic growth and meet increased residential demand for Entergy's 3 million customers. Interested in how the company is investing in serving customers better, both now and for the future? Below are just a few of the many initiatives active right now. Entergy Louisiana is investing more than $400 million over the next four years to upgrade approximately 730 miles of distribution and transmission lines across the state's Capital Region. As part of the project, approximately 20,300 poles will be upgraded to withstand winds of up to 150 mph, helping to ensure the continuity of service in the face of increasingly severe weather events. The initiative will directly benefit the Capital Region's vital industries, as well as small businesses, schools, hospitals and residential customers that rely on affordable and reliable power. With more than $30 billion in industrial projects currently evaluating investment in the region, enhanced grid reliability is a critical factor in supporting continued economic growth. Learn more about future projects in the Louisiana 100 plan. Entergy Texas is roughly 70% complete with construction of the Orange County Advanced Power Station. The plant, designed to generate 1,215 megawatts of power, remains on track to power more than 230,000 homes by June 2026. Bringing this massive project to life requires an impressive inventory of materials: Entergy Texas expects energy demand across residential, commercial and industrial customer bases to increase over the next few years. This growth in energy consumption requires the Entergy Texas power grid to have an additional 1,600 megawatts of generation capacity by 2028, which is approximately 40% of current generation capacity. Learn more about how the company is readying for that growth with its STEP Ahead plan. Entergy New Orleans has announced a $100 million Accelerated Resilience Plan, approved by the New Orleans City Council in October 2024. The plan reflects a commitment to strengthening the grid and creating jobs while driving long-term growth. The first phase of work, to be completed in 2025-2026, will include 65 individual projects, strengthening 3,096 structures and upgrading 63 electric line miles. Company employees are already working closely with local partners to help transform the city's economic landscape in other positive ways: CSX's property in New Orleans East Entergy Arkansas continues its plans to invest millions of dollars into grid upgrades and one example is the recently completed significant reliability upgrades in the Harrisburg community aimed at modernizing aging infrastructure, increasing resilience and reducing the risk of power interruptions. The year-long project, which includes more than two miles of new distribution lines and enhancing substation equipment, is expected to bring improved stability to the area, providing farmers and residents with the reliable power needed to operate essential irrigation systems during the hot summer months. These upgrades represent a proactive investment in the community's future, helping farmers, residents and local businesses thrive with expanded electrical stability. In total for this project, Entergy Arkansas has invested more than $12 million in new upgrades and has rebuilt more than a mile of existing distribution lines allowing the company to support increased load demands and provide consistent power delivery, even during high-demand periods. For more on long-term plans: At Entergy Mississippi, construction is underway at the Delta Blues Advanced Power Station in Greenville. By replacing end-of-life gas generation with more clean and efficient generation, the company is ensuring customers continue to have modern, reliable energy well into the future. Delta Blues Advanced Power Station will be a 754-megawatt facility capable of powering 385,000 homes across Entergy Mississippi's 45-county service area. The $1.2 billion investment represents a significant economic impact for the Mississippi Delta, including more than 300 construction jobs in the area over the next several years and additional tax revenue for Washington County. Entergy will employ about 21 full-time personnel to operate the plant when it comes online. When fully operational, the plant will provide the state a newer, cleaner and more attractive power source to highlight when recruiting new industry and jobs to Mississippi. For more on long-term plans: The Entergy Nuclear River Bend Station in St. Francisville, La., has recently modernized the local emergency notification process, transitioning to a nationally approved system that continues to alert local broadcast and news outlets about severe weather, while putting information directly in the hands of residents. Similar to how people now get storm warnings through their electronic and mobile devices, the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System is now set to give local residents more information in a timelier manner should an emergency occur. IPAWS works by sending local emergency messages to the public to customer's mobile phones using wireless emergency alerts, to radio and television via the Emergency Alert System and also on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's, or NOAA, weather radio. The Federal Emergency Management Agency developed IPAWS over a decade ago is currently being used by major nuclear plants across the nation. These investments, and many more like them, are part of an aggressive plan to invest $37 billion in the grid through 2028. For details, check out Entergy's most recent performance report. Visit 3BL Media to see more multimedia and stories from Entergy Corporation
