POWER February 2017 - 14

near the road will show immediate production
as well as total production of power
since the installation.
In 2014, a Dutch research institute
installed a 70-m-long bike path connecting
Amsterdam suburbs of Krommenie and
Wormerveer at a hefty cost of €3 million.
The SolaRoad project, which comprises
rows of crystalline silicon solar cells encased
within concrete and tempered glass,
has reportedly generated just 3,000 kWh.
POWER Digest
Canada Inches Closer to Nationwide
Carbon Price. Canada's government in
early December struck a deal with eight
of the country's 10 provinces to introduce
its first national carbon price. The government
has proposed that carbon would
cost C$10 per metric ton in 2018, rising
by C$10 a year until it reaches C$50 in
2022. Only Manitoba and Saskatchewan,
a province that relied on coal for about
46% of its power in 2015, declined to sign
the deal, Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau told reporters on December 9.
Trudeau also said that the government
would impose a carbon price on provinces
that refused to voluntarily implement a
carbon tax or cap-and-trade market. The
move follows Ottawa's announcement in
November that the country would phase
out the use of coal-fired power generation
by 2030. However, the federal government
later agreed to let Saskatchewan continue
operating its coal-fired power plants beyond
2030 as long as it achieves equivalent
emission-reduction outcomes. In
late November, Alberta's government announced
that it would pay three coal-fired
generating companies-Capital
95% compared with 1990 levels by 2050.
Among its key points are that offshore
wind turbines will no longer require subsidies
by 2026 and that the EU's cap-andtrade
market won't affect the Netherlands
until the 2030s. The agenda also calls for
newly built houses to be built off the gas
grid, while existing houses will be gradually
disconnected from the gas grid. By
2050, the country expects that houses
will be heated in part with waste heat
from industrial processes and geothermal
heat. The agenda, notably, does not include
plans to shutter existing coal-fired
power plants.
Power
Corp., TransAlta Corp., and ATCO Ltd.-a
total of C$1.36 billion in compensation for
its decision to close their plants early.
Netherlands to Phase Out Renewables
Subsidies. In an " Energy Agenda "
published by the Dutch government on
December 7, the Netherlands explains
that it plans to gradually phase out subsidies
for renewable energy and focus on
energy saving and carbon capture. The
country, which is struggling to reach
2020 renewables targets under European
Union (EU) goals, in November announced
a 33% increase in subsidies for
2017 compared to the year before, up to
$12.9 billion for solar, wind, geothermal,
and other renewable projects. The Energy
Agenda issued by the Economic Affairs
ministry outlines how the country will
cut its greenhouse gas emissions 80% to
14
Massive Power and Water Generating
Plant Begins Operations in
Kuwait. ENGIE on December 12 said
it started full commercial operations of
the 1,539-MW Azzour North One project,
a $1.7 billion facility that is Kuwait's
first integrated water and power plant
(IWPP). Construction on the natural gas-
fired combined cycle gas turbine plant
(which is capable of firing fuel oil as a
back-up fuel) began in January 2014. It
has the capacity to generate 10% of Kuwait's
power requirements at peak capacity
with five General Electric (GE) GTG
9F-3 gas turbines generating 225.8 MW
each and two GE STG D1 steam turbines
generating 251 MW each. The facility
also produces 20% of the country's water,
with 107 million gallons per day (mgd)
produced by a seawater desalination
plant that uses a multiple-effect distillation
unit. The plant is owned and operated
by Shamal Azzour Al-Oula KSC, a
company that is 40% owned by a private
consortium comprising ENGIE, Sumitomo
Corp., and A.H. Al Sagar & Brothers. The
remaining 60% is owned by the Kuwaiti
government, though the government is
mandated to sell 50% of its ownership
to its citizens through an initial public
offering. The power and desalinated water
produced by the plant will be supplied
to the national grid, which is operated
by the Kuwait Ministry of Electricity and
Water under a 40-year energy-conversion
and water-purchase agreement. Kuwait is
looking to expand its generating capacity
to meet an anticipated demand of 25
GW by 2025. To meet this goal, the IWPP
in the Azzour area will be expanded to a
total capacity of 4.8 GW and about 280
mgd of desalinated water.
DONG Energy, Eversource Partner
to Build Mass. Offshore Wind Farm.
DONG Energy and Eversource
Energy
are taking equal stakes in a partnership
to build the Bay State Wind project, an
www.powermag.com
offshore wind farm proposed to be built
about 15 to 25 miles south of Martha's
Vineyard in Massachusetts. DONG Energy
Wind Power U.S. and Eversource-a company
formed in 2012 via the merger of
Northeast Utilities and NSTAR Electric
and Gas-will seek to jointly develop,
build, and operate the utility-scale project
under the joint company Bay State Wind.
DONG Energy, which has built several offshore
wind farms in Europe, will develop
and build the project's offshore generation
and transmission assets, while Eversource
will develop and build the onshore transmission
system. DONG Energy won rights
to a 300-square-mile ocean area offshore
of Massachusetts in a 2015 lease auction
held by the Interior Department. NSTAR
had agreed to buy 27.5% of the power
from the 130-turbine Cape Wind project,
a proposed project in Nantucket Sound
that failed to obtain financing before that
contract was terminated. In August 2016,
Massachusetts became the first state in
the U.S. to mandate that its utilities purchase
offshore wind power, specifically
1,600 MW by 2027.
Google Eyes 100% Renewable Power
for All Operations in 2017. Internet
service mogul Google will power 100% of
its global operations, including data centers
and offices, with renewable energy by
the end of 2017, Urs Hölzle, Google senior
vice president of technical infrastructure,
announced in December. The company became
one of the first corporations to create
large-scale long-term contracts to buy
renewable power directly when it signed an
agreement to buy all the electricity from a
114-MW wind farm in Iowa in 2010. At the
end of December 2016, Google had power-purchase
agreements that surpassed
2.6 GW for wind and solar power from 20
projects sited in diverse locations from
Grady County, Okla., and Rutherford County,
N.C., to the Atacama region in Chile
and municipalities in Sweden. To achieve
its 100% goal as quickly as possible, the
company pioneered a " fixed-floating swap
model. " This approach, described in a December
white paper, essentially involves
purchasing fixed-price renewable energy
in
competitive wholesale markets and
then reselling that power into the market
at a variable market rate. The company
then buys " smooth 24/7 energy " at the
data center from its regulated utility and
applies renewable energy certificates from
its power purchase agreements to that
consumption. The company's data centers
require tremendous amounts of power,
and renewables are increasingly becomPOWER
| February 2017
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POWER February 2017

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