POWER June 2015 - 11

Ned Sauthoff, director of the U.S. ITER
Project Office, said power density is what
sets fusion apart from all other generation
resources. " There's a factor of 20 million
between the amount of energy you
get per pound of fuel from fusion relative
to chemical processes. " If fusion can be
made economic, he said, " It would really
change the world. "
The ITER group is officially shooting
for first plasma by 2020, but Sauthoff
told POWER he thinks 2025 is a more realistic
date.
The ITER project will test a wide variety
of heating, control, diagnostics,
and remote maintenance technologies
that would be required for use of fusion
for power generation. If successful, ITER
could lay the groundwork for commercial
fusion reactor plants that could be online
by the 2040s.
-Thomas W. Overton, JD, associate
editor
EU to Investigate
Measures to Ensure Power
Supply
The European Commission (EC) this April
launched an extensive investigation into
subsidies that 11 European governments
provide to utilities to ensure future power
reliability, saying it is concerned that the
measures may distort competition.
The sector inquiry into capacity mechanisms
is the first under European Union
(EU) state aid rules introduced in May
2012, which prohibit government aid unless
justified by reasons of general economic
development.
The EC said it recognizes that capacity
mechanisms are designed to fill expected
capacity gaps, encourage investment in
new power plants, and ensure that power
plants continue to operate, providing
enough capacity to avoid blackouts.
But, " typically, capacity mechanisms
offer additional rewards to capacity providers,
on top of income obtained by selling
electricity on the market, in return for
maintaining existing capacity or investing
in new capacity needed to guarantee
security of electricity supplies, " it said.
Depending on how they are implemented,
capacity mechanisms could potentially
fragment the EU single market, distort
competition by favoring certain producers
or types of technology, and create barriers
to trade across national borders, it added.
The sector inquiry will initially focus on
Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany,
Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain,
and Sweden. However, the EC said that it
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may expand the sample of member states,
depending on preliminary results. It will
also seek details from generators, power
suppliers, and network operators. A draft
report is expected at the end of the year
and a final report by the summer of 2016.
The bulk of Europe's generators are
seemingly on board with the idea that
capacity markets must evolve from national
to regional solutions. According
to Hans ten Berge, secretary general of
industry group EURELECTRIC, " capacity
markets should strengthen rather than
undermine ongoing efforts to complete
the Internal Energy Market. We therefore
urge policymakers to make sure that
capacity markets go beyond national
borders. In addition, capacity markets
should follow a set of basic design features:
they should be market-based,
technology-neutral, open to new and
existing plants, and open to generation,
demand response and storage. "
-Sonal Patel, associate editor
http://www.powermag.com
POWER June 2015

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