Power Prices, Regulation, Solar, Wind  -  October 15, 2016

Weekend reads: 'Clean coal' progress; world's largest solar project; a wind output web tool & more

Every Saturday, we'll bring you five most interesting — or quirky; it is the weekend after all — energy stories from the prior week that you may have missed from around the web. This weekend's reads:

Southern's $6.9 Billion Clean Coal Plant Produces First Power (Bloomberg): Southern Co.'s $6.9 billion "clean coal" power plant in Mississippi produced electricity for the first time.
The Kemper station used synthetic natural gas, converted from Mississippi lignite coal, to produce its first batch of power, Southern’s Mississippi Power utility said in a statement Wednesday. The generation brings Southern a step closer to placing the plant into full commercial operations after years of delays and cost overruns.

World's Largest Solar Project Would Generate Electricity 24 Hours a Day, Power 1 Million U.S. Homes (EcoWatch): The race to build the world's largest solar power plant is heating up. California-based energy company SolarReserve announced plans for a massive concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Nevada that claims to be the largest of its kind once built. That amount of power is as much as a nuclear power plant, or the 2,000-megawatt Hoover Dam and far bigger than any other existing solar facility on Earth, the Review-Journal pointed out.

Vermont Wind Project Needs Support, So Company Offers to Pay Voters (The New York Times): To many residents in this tiny town in southern Vermont, the last-minute offer of cash was a blatant attempt to buy their votes. To the developer that offered the money, it was simply a sign of how attentively the company had been listening to voters' concerns. The company, Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish energy developer, wants to build Vermont's largest wind project on a private forest tract that spans Windham and the adjacent town of Grafton.

Watch clean energy costs fall, in one chart (Vox): The Department of Energy just released Revolution Now, an annual update on its progress in accelerating clean energy. Specifically, it focuses on advances in five technologies: wind power, utility-scale solar power, distributed solar power, electric vehicles, and LEDs. DOE has also reduced the report to a "six charts" post. However, we here at Vox understand that you, the modern media consumer, are a busy person, with many intriguing Facebook links to click while you pretend to work. You don’t have time to go scrolling and wading through six whole graphs like you're on holiday or something.

New Web Tool Estimates Solar and Wind Output (The Energy Collective): It's called Renewables Ninja and researchers at Imperial College London believe that it can estimate the total amount of energy that can be generated by solar and wind in any part of the world. The web tool includes a map which you can click on and then run the program to get the estimates you need.

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