West Coast solar power could get a major boost if the California Energy Commission approves as many as six of 13 proposed utility-scale solar projects in Southern California’s Mojave Desert by year-end. Photo: Courtesy Brightsource Energy Mirror arrays collect Southern California sunshine and convert water to steam to drive generators. Other systems under consideration use thin-film compounds and waterless thermal troughs. At a series of meetings in October and November, the CEC will consider authorizing construction for some of the largest solar installations since 354 MW went online in the 1990s. An additional 3,500 MW of capacity—an estimated $18 billion

Pepco, the electric utility that serves Washington, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs, will spend $256.5 million over the next five years to accelerate planned improvements to its distribution system after it struggled to recover from a severe thunderstorm in late July. More than 322,000 Pepco customers lost power after the storm; the company took five days to restore the power. The utility added $115 million to a planned system reliability upgrade after executives were grilled by the Maryland Public Service Commission about their response to the July storm and back-to-back snowstorms in February. Earlier this month, Pepco asked state regulators

Hyperion Power Generation, Santa Fe, N.M., has agreed to build a prototype nuclear mini reactor at the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Savannah River site in Aiken, S.C., officials said on Sept. 9. It signed a memorandum of understanding with the Savannah River National Laboratory to build what officials say would be the first of several small demonstration reactors at the site. Hyperion is developing a 25-MW fast-neutron reactor that uses uranium nitride fuel and lead bismuth eutectic coolant. The operational prototype should be built by 2017 or 2018, says a DOE site spokesman. The demo reactor, with a current cost estimate

Deere & Co.’s recent agreement with Exelon Corp. to offload its wind-farm division for $900 million comes at a time when construction activity in wind power is anything but breezy. Photo: Tudor Van Hampton For ENR A lack of federal legislation for renewable energy is holding back the market for wind power and green jobs, supporters say. “The overall economy has affected this market,” says Tom Wacker, senior vice president of M.A. Mortenson Co., Minneapolis. “But the business has very much experienced a boom-and-bust cycle, and that’s because of the lack of consistent federal legislation.” During 2010’s first half, Mortenson

Cape Wind, the estimated $1-billion offshore wind farm planned for Nantucket Sound off the Massachusetts coast, cleared a major hurdle on Aug. 30. The state supreme court upheld a state board’s approval for an underground and undersea transmission line between the project’s 130 proposed turbines and the regional power grid. Cape Wind, set to generate 420 MW of power, had federal approval to build, but its 18.4-mile power line required state siting approval. The 4-2 decision effectively upheld the state board’s ability to overrule local authorities, which had denied Cape Wind’s permit request.

In a first-of-its-kind deal, waste management firm EnergySolutions Inc. has taken control of the shut-down Zion nuclear powerplant near Chicago from owner Exelon Corp.; the firm will decommission and dismantle the facility, built in 1973, and return it to a greenfield state under budget and ahead of schedule. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, control of the Lake County, Ill., plant’s license. The firm is set to clean up the 257-acre Lake Michigan site in seven to 10 years, including paperwork and environmental remediation, and return license and site control to Chicago-based Exelon.The industry standard

Through most of the past decade, rising demand for electricity in the U.S. led utilities and independent power companies to plan, design and build scores of new powerplants. Photo: Courtesy of International Power Zachry is part of a consortium designing, equipping and building a 650-MW coal plant in Texas. Related Links: Environment: Treatment-Facility Work, Cleanups Bolster Sector General Building: Firms Find Little Respite From Weak Economy Manufacturing/Telecommunications: Tough Market Requires Top-Notch Players Petroleum: Projects Cancelled in Uncertain Climate Transportation: Dearth of Funds Keeps Sector in Doldrums The Top 400 Contractors List With an anemic economic recovery and a focus on

There was both bad and good news for petroleum contractors this summer. The bad news was a pall of uncertainty currently shrouding petro markets as major oil-spill disasters—Gulf of Mexico rig explosions and a Michigan pipeline leak so far this year—ratcheted up scrutiny, opposition, delays and cancellations of new projects. But if there is good news for petro contractors, it is the fact that America’s monstrous thirst for oil remains unabated, and contractors know it’s only a matter of time before the carbon-based infrastructure market comes roaring back to life. Photo: Courtesy of SAIC SAIC has three contracts for hydrocracker

A Houston company has completed construction of a pair of power-generation barges that, when installed later this year in Venezuela, will become the world’s largest floating power-generation facility. Photo: Courtesy Walker Marine Inc. Floating powerplants will move from Signal International Shipyard in Orange, Texas, to Venezuela in September. Waller Marine Inc. completed work on the two $125-million vessels, Margarita I and Josefa Rufina I, earlier this month at the Signal International Shipyard in Orange, Texas. Each barge boasts a single GE 7FA turbine generator and is capable of producing 171-MW. When installed in a prepared basin at Tacoa, Venezuela, near

Boise, Idaho-based U.S. Geothermal Inc. announced on Aug. 30 that it has signed a contract with Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), McLean, Va., for engineering, procurement and construction for the first phase of a new geothermal powerplant at San Emidio in northwest Nevada. The design-build work will be done by a subsidiary of the Benham Cos. LLC, a unit of SAIC. The first phase of the project, set to cost $27 million and be completed by the end of 2011, will generate between 8 MW and 9 MW of power. A second phase, to cost $170 million, will add an