Destroyer (Marvel Comics)

The Destroyer is the name of three fictional superheroes appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. One of the earliest creations of major comics-industry figure Stan Lee, the original incarnation first appeared in the 1940s during what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books.
Modern incarnations created by Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins appeared in "Invaders" #18 (July 1977), and "Invaders" #26 (March 1978). The "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" clarifies that all three versions of the character are considered canon.
Publication history.
Golden Age publications.
The Destroyer first appeared as the cover subject and in a story in "Mystic Comics" #6 (Oct. 1941), from Marvel Comics' predecessor Timely Comics. One of the World War II-era heroes of what fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, the character was one of the first co-created by Marvel writer-editor Stan Lee. The artist co-creator is uncertain: the story penciler-inker was Jack Binder, but the cover artist, who may have drawn the character first, was Alex Schomburg.
In 1997, comics historian and former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas wrote that "Stan's most popular superhero creation before the Fantastic Four was the Destroyer." However, a 2019 book by Thomas and Kurt Mitchell described the Destroyer as "a Stan Lee-written mash-up of Captain America's origin and Blazing Skull's setting notable largely for its hero's eerie grey-and-red costume."
According to "Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes", "He fights a variety of villains, from ordinary Axis agents to Dr. Dragon to Satan and Madam Satan to the Japanese villain the Face."
The Destroyer ran as the cover feature of "Mystic" #6 and of the remaining four issues of that 10-issue superhero anthology, and while less popular than the company's Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner, he went on to star in issues of nearly every Timely superhero comic-book series — becoming the company's most-published character outside of those three stars and the Angel.
The Destroyer stood out from other wartime heroes in that he operated solely within occupied Europe. Artists associated with the feature include pencilers Al Gabriele and Mike Sekowsky, and inkers Vince Alascia and Allen Bellman. Comic-book giant Jack Kirby contributed the Destroyer cover of "Mystic Comics" #7 (Dec. 1941). The cover was inked by either Syd Shores or Joe Simon (sources differ).
The character's Golden Age appearances included:
1970s Publications.
Roy Thomas and Frank Robbins first featured Roger Aubrey as the diminutive Dyna-Mite in "Invaders" #14–15 (March–April 1977); in the story he is part of a group of the predominantly British superhero group the Crusaders, who are being manipulated by the Nazis into killing the British King. He returns in Thomas and Robbins' "Invaders" #18–21 (July–October 1977); in the story he parachutes into Nazi Germany with Lord Falsworth and Spitfire on a mission to restore his memory; a flashback reveals that he and his best friend Brian Falsworth had gone to Berlin on a peace mission which ended with them in a Nazi prison where he was experimented on.
Thomas and Robbins also featured the Falsworth incarnation of the Destroyer in "Invaders" #18–19 (July–August 1977); in the story he explains how he received a variation of the super-soldier formula from a fellow inmate of a Nazi prison; the previous incarnation as Marlow is retconed as a mistaken FBI theory popularized in comic books. Thomas and Robbins concluded the plot-line in "The Invaders" #20–21 (September–October 1977); in the story he abandons his role as the Destroyer and takes over his father's role of Union Jack to rescue his sister and the rest of the team while Aubrey helps to steal a plane to get them home, and in "Invaders" #22 (November 1977); in which they are both safely returned to England. Thomas and Robbins also featured Falsworth as Union Jack in "What If?" #4 (August 1977); in the story he and Spitfire save Winston Churchill from a Nazi assassination attempt.
Thomas and Robbins continued to feature Falsworth and Aubrey in the series, with the former becoming a semi-permanent member of the team in his new role as Union Jack with issues #23 (December 1977) & #25 (February 1978); in which he joins them on his first mission, while the latter appeared in a supporting role as Dyna-Mite in issue #23 (December 1977); in which he searches for a cure for the Nazi experimentation that has reduced his size, and #26 (March 1978); in which a restored Aubrey is introduced in his role as the new Destroyer. This incarnation was also featured by Thomas, Donald Glut and Alan Kupperberg in "Invaders" #34 (November 1978) and by Glut, Kupperberg and Charles Eber Stone in "Invaders" #41 (September 1979).
1980s publications.
Roger Stern and John Byrne mentioned Falsworth in the backstory for "Captain America" Vol. 1 #253–254 (January–February 1981); the story reveals in a flashback that he died in a car crash in 1953.
1990s publications.
Dan Slott and James W. Fry III featured Aubrey in the World War II-era story "Enis Nacht" for "Marvel Comics Presents" volume 1 #156 (June 1994); in the story he guides a British bomber to its Nazi target. Slott and Fry featured him in another World War II-era story for "Midnight Sons Unlimited" #9 (May 1995); in the story he helps the Blazing Skull to infiltrate a Nazi base.
2000s publications.
Aubrey appears as a supporting character in Fabian Nicieza and Lewis LaRosa's "Citizen V and the V-Battalion: The Everlasting" #1 (March 2002); the story begins with a flashback showing him at Falsworth's funeral in 1953.
Allan Jacobsen and C.P. Smith used Aubrey as a supporting character in a number of volumes "New Invaders", including, #2 (November 2004), in which he is claimed to be one of the new team's first recruits, #4–5 (January–February 2005), which sees him battling the vampiric Baroness Blood alongside Union Jack; and #9 (June 2005), which sees him resuming command of V-Battalion following the death of the original Human Torch.
Fictional character biographies.
Keen Marlow.
American journalist Keen Marlow is captured for spying while reporting behind-the-lines in Nazi Germany. While imprisoned in a concentration camp—that specific phrase being used before its association with the Holocaust—Marlow is given a super-soldier serum, similar to that given to Captain America, by fellow prisoner Professor Eric Schmitt, an anti-Nazi German scientist. Responding to the chemical (and without the beneficial "Vita-Rays" used to chemically stabilize Captain America's serum), Marlow becomes a prime human specimen who escapes, dons a sleek, dark costume with a skull motif and a skintight blue mask that made him appear inhuman, and adopts a fearsome identity with which he fights the Nazis on their own turf. He was occasionally abetted by an Allied agent named Florence von Banger. Antagonists included the Scar, Herr Sin and Von Maus.
Brian Falsworth.
In the Destroyer's retcon appearances in the 1970s, the same origin is recounted except for his identity. Now he is Brian Falsworth, brother of Spitfire (a member of the World War II superhero group the Invaders) and son of James Montgomery Falsworth, Lord Falsworth, who had been the World War I hero Union Jack. In this storyline, when Captain America asked if the Destroyer is or is not "an American named Keen Marlow", Falsworth declined to respond.
Roger Aubrey.
Brian Falsworth gave up the Destroyer identity in order to become the new Union Jack, and his friend Roger Aubrey (initially introduced as the superhero Dyna-Mite, a member of the team the Crusaders) became the new Destroyer. Falsworth's story is recounted in passing in Ed Brubaker's 2009–2010 miniseries "The Marvels Project" as part of the Angel's diary of the war. This retelling claims that "Keen Marlow" was an alias used by Falsworth to enter Germany to spy; he was betrayed and captured, and then empowered well after Captain America. However, prior established continuity showed that Falsworth entered Germany under his real name pre-war to promote appeasement, that he was captured trying to leave Germany shortly after Poland was invaded, and empowered only days later, more than a year before Steve Rogers became Captain America. It was later revealed that Brian and Roger were lovers.
Other versions.
Versions of the Destroyer, both in continuity and out, have appeared in various Marvel comics. "The Age of the Sentry" #5 (March 2009) depicts the character as a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The character also made a guest appearance in a 2000s issue of "New Invaders".
MAX imprint.
Marvel's MAX imprint published the five-issue miniseries "The Destroyer" vol. 4 (June–Oct. 2009). Written by Robert Kirkman and drawn by Cory Walker, it starred a version of the character Keene Marlow depicted, according to Kirkman, under "the assumption that he's had an ongoing series since the '40s, so I'm basically writing 'issues #701-#705' ..." In this series, a still-active but elderly Marlowe discovers he has a limited amount of time before he will suffer a fatal heart attack, and sets out to kill his old enemies and anyone else who might threaten his wife Harriet, who is black and has a bionic arm, or their grown daughter Felecia.
Keene Marlow (his first name slightly different from the earlier comics' "Keen") is enhanced by a super-soldier serum variant, similar to the one used to create Captain America (Steve Rogers), but lacking the Vita-Ray treatment. His former sidekick Turret (Darius Mitchell) is married to Felecia and takes over the role of the Destroyer when Marlow retires.
In other media.
Television.
The Keen Marlow incarnation of the Destroyer, renamed Keene Marlowe, appears in the 1990s "Spider-Man" animated series five-part episode "Six Forgotten Warriors", voiced by Roy Dotrice. This version is an old colleague of Captain America and an old friend of Ben Parker who gained his powers after taking part in an experiment meant to duplicate the serum that gave the former his powers alongside the Whizzer, Miss America, the Black Marvel, and the Thunderer during World War II.


Jack Broughton (RAF officer)

Air Commodore Jack Broughton, is a retired senior Royal Air Force officer. A navigator, he obtained senior rank in the 1970s and 1980s and was Commandant Royal Observer Corps from 1984 to 1986. Broughton was the Station Commander of RAF West Drayton from 1978 to 1980.


Kuo Ping-Wen

Kuo Ping-Wen or Guo Bingwen (; 1880–1969), courtesy name Hongsheng (鴻聲), was an influential Chinese educator.
Biography.
Kuo was born in Shanghai, Jiangsu province, and his father was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. He attended Lowrie Institute (The Pure Heart Academy, Qingxin Shuyuan 清心書院), which was connected with the First Presbyterian Church in Shanghai (founded by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham, 1830–1917), graduating in 1896. Kuo Ping-wen then served in the customs and postal bureaus before coming to the United States in 1906 under the sponsorship of the Presbyterian Church, at first attending the Preparatory Academy at the University of Wooster, now the College of Wooster, in Ohio, and later, in 1908, matriculating at the University of Wooster with the support of the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program.
At Wooster, Kuo was one of the editors of the university newspaper, "The Wooster Voice", and General Secretary of the Chinese Students Alliance. In 1911 he wrote an extensive article for the newspaper on the history of Chinese students in the United States, beginning with Yung Wing (Rong Hong) 容閎 at Yale University in the mid-nineteenth century. He won several speech prizes for the university and was mentored in oratory by Professor of Speech Delbert Lean. He graduated with honors from the University of Wooster in 1911 and then undertook graduate studies in Education under John Dewey and Paul Monroe at Columbia University, where he received his M.A. degree in 1912 and his Ph.D. in 1914. His doctoral dissertation, "The Chinese System of Public Education", was published by the Teachers College at Columbia in 1915 and is a wide-ranging study of the history and structural development of education in China from ancient times onward. The Chinese edition of the book was published in Shanghai in 1916.
In 1914 Kuo returned to China where he transformed the Nanjing Higher Normal School ( Nanjing Gaodeng Shifan Xuexiao 南京高等师范学校) into the first modern co-educational Chinese University, National Southeastern University (Guoli Dongnan Daxue 国立东南大学), which was later renamed National Central University (Guoli Zhongyang Daxue 国立中央大学) in 1928 and Nanjing University (Nanjing Daxue 南京大学) in 1949, and his ideas exerted a broad influence in Chinese educational circles. In 1921, he became the first chancellor of the Shanghai College of Commerce (Shanghai Shangke Daxue上海商科大学), which in 1917 had emerged from the program in commerce at Nanjing Higher Normal School. The Shanghai College of Commerce was the forerunner of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) (Shanghai Caijing Daxue 上海财经大学). Kuo was the president of National Nanjing Higher Normal School from 1919-1923 and National Southeastern University from 1921-1925.
Kuo Ping-wen was elected three times as Vice-Chairman of the World Education Congress (Shijie Jiaoyuhui 世界教育會) and became the Chairman of its Asian division in 1923. His removal from his presidential post at National Southeastern University in 1925 was a result of the intrusion of political forces into higher education and academia during the turbulent decade of the 1920s in China. Essentially, Kuo had made compromises with the warlords during that decade in order to develop National Southeastern University, and the rise of the Kuomintang set him at odds with the Nationalist leadership. Later on in 1925, he came to the United States to lecture at the University of Chicago and was one of the founders of the China Institute in New York City, and also its Director, 1926-1930. He married Ruth How, Xia Yu 夏瑜, on October 12, 1935 in Hangzhou. During the Second World War, Kuo was stationed in London with the Chinese Embassy and then returned to the United States as a member of the Chinese delegation associated with the early formation of the United Nations. He was instrumental in the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and served as the deputy director of the United Nations Relief Rehabilitation Administration. In the last decade of his life, he was President of the Sino-American Cultural Society in Washington, D.C., an organization he founded in 1958. Kuo Ping-wen is buried in Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Maryland.
Legacy.
In June 2011, the 100th anniversary of Kuo's graduation from the University of Wooster, and ninety years after Kuo was appointed as President of National Southeastern University, a conference examining Kuo's contribution to higher education in China was held in Nanjing at Southeast University, the site of former Southeastern University which Kuo had helped found. Scholars from the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and the United States were represented, and the participants presented papers dealing with Kuo's educational thought, his ideas on structuring higher education in China, and his impact on relations between East and West. On October 25, 2014, a symposium was held at Columbia University Teachers College dealing with Kuo's contributions to higher education in China and to Sino-Cultural institutions and affairs in the United States. Scholars from the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China and the United States contributed papers and participated in discussions on Kuo's career and its significance. In March, 2016, the book "Kuo Ping Wen: Scholar, Reformer, Statesman", a collection of essays on Kuo as educator, statesman, and cultural ambassador, edited by Ryan Allen and Ji Liu, was published by Long River Press, and in October, 2016 a book-signing symposium was held at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University.
Since his academic background was shaped at liberal arts institutions, Kuo believed that a well-rounded education in both the sciences and the humanities was essential. Moreover, since his undergraduate experience at the University of Wooster was co-educational, he was a strong supporter of women's education in China. It was at the University of Wooster that Kuo changed his plan to study law and focused instead on issues of educational reform, which became the basis for his career once he returned to China. His educational philosophy embraced a strategy based on Four Balances: the balance between well-rounded education and specialized education, the balance between humanistic education and scientific education, the balance between investment in teaching faculty and investment in teaching facilities, and the balance between national and international learning. Kuo felt that China could learn much from the study of Western accomplishments in science, just as the West could learn much from China about the philosophy of life, and he was a strong supporter of the expansion of Chinese studies at American colleges and universities. In furthering interactions between East and West through education, Kuo Ping-wen contributed to building the Sino-American relationship that flourishes today.


Military Ordinariate of Brazil

The Military Ordinariate of Brazil () is a military ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church. Immediately subject to the Holy See, it provides pastoral care to Roman Catholics serving in the Brazilian Armed Forces and their families.
History.
It was created as a military vicariate on 6 November 1950, with the first military vicar appointment on the same day. It was elevated to a military ordinariate on 21 July 1986. The military ordinary's seat is located at the Military Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Military Queen of Peace (Catedral Militar Santa Maria dos Militares Rainha da Paz) in the city of Brasília.


Grandad (Only Fools and Horses)

Edward Kitchener "Ted" Trotter, better known simply as Grandad (9 July 1909 — 1985), is a fictional character who was one of the original leads of the BBC sitcom "Only Fools and Horses". He appeared in the show's first three series, played by Lennard Pearce. The character is grandfather to Del Boy and Rodney Trotter. After Pearce's death in December 1984, Grandad was written out of the series. His place was taken by Uncle Albert (Buster Merryfield).
The character was portrayed by Phil Daniels in the prequel series "Rock & Chips".
Backstory.
Born in Peckham Rye, London in 1909, Grandad stated that his earliest memories were of watching the soldiers marching off to World War I and witnessing their return after the Armistice in 1918. He later spoke of the horror of these experiences with his description of the wartime government policy ("They promised us homes fit for heroes, we got heroes fit for homes!").
In 1924, after leaving school, Grandad got a job as a decorator working for the Council but was sacked after just two days for wallpapering over a serving hatch. He then began working as a lamplighter for the London Gas Light and Coke Company, and trained as a chef at the Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, but by the 1930s, he was unemployed and living with his parents and his brothers, George, Albert, and Jack, in Peabody Buildings, Peckham Rye. In 1936, he and his friend Nobby Clarke ran away to Tangier to join the French Foreign Legion; however, they were unsuccessful and ended up becoming gun runners during the Spanish Civil War. They were caught by the authorities. Nobby was tortured but Grandad chose to confess everything under interrogation. Both were deported from Spain and all her territories and dominions. He returned to Peckham and joined the dole queues, marrying his wife Violet sometime before the war, and fathering a son, Reg.
During World War II, Grandad evidently served some time in the army as he told Del he was given a double-headed coin by a fellow soldier and his son Reg checked his blood group on his old army records, as seen in "Thicker than Water"; however, he must have been demobbed before the end of war as he temporarily separated from his wife and had an affair with Trigger's grandmother Alice, while her husband Arthur was still fighting. During the episode "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Uncle", Uncle Albert (Buster Merryfield) shows Del a photograph of Grandad during the war. When Del asks why Grandad is wearing a vest and plimsolls, Albert answers 'Well, he'd just deserted.'
After the war, Grandad had various short-term jobs before he retired, including working as a security officer at a warehouse in Kilburn, which he was sacked from after a janitor stole over three hundred briefcases from under his nose. His wife, who apparently worked as a charlady in these later years, died in the early 1960s, when Rodney was still young.
It is revealed in "Tea For Three", by Grandad's younger brother Albert, that he and Albert fell out over Albert's later wife, Ada. Albert tells Rodney that while walking home from a nightclub together, they both had a fight, and never spoke to each other again after that. Despite this, in the episode "Miami Twice", Albert mentions that he married Ada "before" enlisting to fight in World War II, and "after" the war, as revealed in "Hole in One", he and Grandad would often pull schemes on local pubs by having Albert fall down cellar stairs without hurting himself and claiming compensation whenever they were short of money. Albert also mentions that during their youth, Grandad often looked after him, and it was for this reason that Albert regretted their falling out, attended Grandad's funeral, and even tried to swindle the Nag's Head brewery in order to raise money to pay for Grandad's gravestone.
In the programme.
The character of Grandad was written out of the original show following the death of the actor Lennard Pearce but is a main character (called frequently by his real name "Ted") in the 2010-2011 prequel series "Rock & Chips". Set in 1960, Grandad has separated from his wife Vi, and is unemployed and subsequently homeless, after she finds out about his affair with Alice. Grandad then moves in with his son Reg. The Trotters are at that time squeezed into a two-up two-down terraced house and Grandad is forced to share a bedroom with his grandson Del. He appears to enjoy a close relationship with his family and remains with them when they move to their new council flat in Nelson Mandela House (which was then known as the "Sir Walter Raleigh House").
Grandad is seen in the first series of Only Fools and Horses. Grandad is by this point in his mid-seventies, largely infirm and still living at Nelson Mandela House with his grandsons. He is often seen watching two television sets at once, one black-and-white TV and one colour TV. In the Second Time Around it is revealed that he would normally watch three sets but one was being mended. Grandad's favourite television shows are "Crossroads" and "The Dukes of Hazzard", as revealed in "Homesick" and "May The Force Be With You", and the former episode reveals that he also enjoys listening to "The Archers" on the radio. In "Yesterday Never Comes", Del suggests that he watches "The Chinese Detective" in his bedroom in order to remove him from the sitting room.
Because of their sense of family loyalty, the Trotters ensure that he will always have a home, with Del dismissing his fiancée Pauline's suggestion of putting Grandad into a residential home because "he's family" ("The Second Time Around"). Grandad is a poor cook; his final line in the series is "Del Boy, I've burnt yer pizza!", and in the first Christmas special he left the giblets in their plastic wrapping inside the turkey, not knowing what it meant by 'ready cleaned'. In the first episode when Rodney came home after a week’s absence he declined a meal cooked by Grandad despite being ravenously hungry. Del also played an April Fools joke on Grandad, telling him that the pools had called to say that he had won £500,000. Grandad went to Soho and celebrated then realised that he did not do the pools.
None of the main characters addresses Grandad by his name. Trigger addresses him as 'Mr Trotter' in Ashes to Ashes, and in "Who's a Pretty Boy?", even pet shop owner Louis greets him as 'Grandad'. His name is not revealed until "Rock & Chips".
When Lennard Pearce died in 1984, writer John Sullivan chose not to replace him but to write the character's death into the series. A funeral was held for Grandad in "Strained Relations", which saw the Trotter brothers trying to come to terms with the loss of a man who had been such an integral part of their lives. This episode also introduced Grandad's younger brother Uncle Albert. It is also known that apart from Albert, Grandad had two more brothers: George, whom he mentioned in the episode "The Russians Are Coming"; and Jack, who was mentioned by Albert in "A Royal Flush".


Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day

Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day is a public holiday in Zimbabwe commemorating former President Robert Mugabe.
The ZANU–PF Youth League has commemorated Robert Mugabe on his birthday in February for years as part of its February 21st Movement which was established in 1986. The youth arm of the ruling party lobbied for the former president's birthday to be declared a national holiday for what the organization says the leader's role in empowering the country's youth.
The day was formally recognized as a national holiday on February 24 2017 on the same day President Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as leader of Zimbabwe following a coup which led to the resignation of Mugabe as President. The holiday was formalized through the publication of a statutory instrument on The Herald under the virtue of section 2 of the Public Holidays and Prohibition of Business Act.


Raid on Kunar

The Raid on Kunar was a NATO operation which took place on February 17, 2012. Six civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed in the airstrike and ground raid near the Dewa Gul Valley, "a Taliban stronghold in the Chawki district of Kunar province".
Hundreds of Afghans in Chawki protested NATO's actions. President Hamid Karzai sent a delegation to investigate the incident; according to his office, witnesses confirmed that six civilians were killed in the action.

MXenergy

MXenergy is a retail natural gas and electricity supplier in North America. It was founded in 1999 to provide natural gas and electricity in deregulated energy markets. In 2006, the company was named fourth on "Inc." magazine's list of fastest growing private companies in America on the basis of revenue, 370th on the basis of growth rate. The company merged in 2012 with Constellation Energy.
History.
MXenergy was founded in 1999 by Jeffrey Mayer, the company's current chief executive officer and president; Robi Artman-Hodge, the company's first CFO and later its executive vice president until Spring 2010; and Daniel Burke, the company's first chief operating officer.
The company's first office was in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2000, the company opened an office in Stamford, Connecticut, for executive management, finance, and accounting.
Controversies.
In August 2008, the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control (“CT-DPUC”) began an investigation of MXenergy that was later joined by the office of Richard Blumenthal, the then Connecticut Attorney General, and Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel. The investigation followed complaints from customers who complained of high bills following the run-up of international energy prices in the spring of 2008. MXenergy customers who had enrolled in fixed prices for a four-month period in the spring found their prices jumped to higher monthly variable prices in June 2008.
After a lengthy investigation, the CT-DPUC issued a report that found among other things that the company had "massively overcharged" customers, and had given 30 days and not 45 days notice of price changes as required by state regulation. The CT-DPUC did not find any evidence of intentional customer protection violations. The CT-DPUC acknowledged that the company had voluntarily brought the matter to the regulators’ attention after it learned that it had inadvertently neglected to send out price change notices in a timely manner and that the company had voluntarily offered to extend its fixed prices, and agreed in a settlement to credit or refund $2.1 million to affected customers.
Environmental record.
The company is a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange and is an Energy Star Partner placing a strong focus on environmental and sustainability issues. The company currently offers 100% renewable energy to its Connecticut customers.
MXenergy offers carbon offset credits to its customers as a way to neutralize their carbon footprint. The credits support new forestry in Columbus, Georgia. The company is partnered with Valley Wood, Inc., a certified offset aggregator for the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Community service.
MXenergy has sponsored two coat drives in 2010. The first was in January in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Teaming up with WAEB 790 AM, WMHX 106.7 FM, and WODE 99.9 FM The HAWK, warm clothing and food were collected for The Rescue Mission, Jewish Family Service Food Bank, Kosher Food Pantry, and The Salvation Army in Allentown, as well as the Volunteers of American in Mechanicsburg.
MXenergy also teamed up with 95.9 FM The Fox for a coat drive in Norwalk, Connecticut. The drive was meant to raise warm clothing and food for the Norwalk Emergency Center, but so many donations were received that a sizable donation was also made to the Community Closet in Bridgeport.
In 2009, James Boncek of Fairfield, Connecticut began converting a $100 1993 Toyota Tercel from gasoline to battery power. With significant financial backing from MXenergy, this goal was achieved after 100 hours of research and 100 hours of labor. The car currently gets 50 miles per charge off its 12 batteries and can be plugged into any wall plug. Boncek currently speaks at schools about environmental sustainability.


Cota (power)

Cota is a wireless power technology built on the same principles and frequencies as Wi-Fi. Cota was announced on September 9, 2013 at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Features.
Cota can detect the position of a power receiver within its network and focus a signal to only that position, enabling up to 1 watt of power to be transmitted wirelessly. Since the charge hub can detect, focus, and send the signal to a specific point in 3D space, there is no risk of injury compared to other means of wireless power such as microwave power transmission. Additionally, since Cota uses the same frequency range as Wi-Fi, its range is about 30 feet, an improvement over inductive wireless standards such as Qi which typically have a range of only a few centimeters.
FCC Approval.
In June 2019 the Federal Communications Commission granted Ossia an equipment authorization for the Cota wireless power system (Cota Transmitter and Receiver), approving its wireless power delivery and data communications under Parts 18 and 15, respectively, of the FCC's rules and certifying the system to be marketed and sold in the U.S.


IBC SOLAR

IBC Solar is a Germany based photovoltaics specialist, offering solutions for sunlight-generated power. The company, established in 1982, offers tailored solutions, project management, consultation and planning of the photovoltaic installation.
Founder and CEO of the company, Udo Möhrstedt, was named Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 in the trade category by Ernst & Young.
IBC Solar has six regional companies in Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, India, Japan and Singapore. In 2019, the company generated a consolidated global turnover of 332 million Euro.
Their distribution network for solar products covers over 1.000 distributors and wholesalers, across over 30 different countries.
Products and projects.
IBC Solar markets modules and components of renowned manufacturers and also distributes its own product line through domestic retail partners. While a big part of its business is generated through a network of local installation partners, the company also specializes in the planning and implementation of photovoltaic systems for large commercial clients, as well as subsequent monitoring of the systems.
For example, the company has installed a PV power station with a peak output of 13.2 Megawatt in Spain near Alicante, which has been producing electricity since 2008. This project was conducted together with the electricity provider Enercoop. For Greenpeace Energy, a German green energy utility provider, IBC Solar planned and implemented one of the largest PV roof systems in the world on the Stuttgart trade fair center (Messe Stuttgart).
Cooperations and partnerships.
IBC Solar AG has long term contracts with solar cell manufactures as well as solar panel suppliers. On a test field near the company headquarters, the company tests the long term efficiency and reliability of the modules and inverters in its portfolio. Based on the findings from its long term testing, IBC SOLAR has defined criteria for modules and inverters with manufactures and markets these product under their own brand.
IBC Solar’s international business has been supported by the German energy agency’s solar roof program. By providing German companies with the opportunity to show their expertise in beacon projects in international markets, Dena supports the market entry of German companies. Companies interested in international projects have to apply for one of the projects the energy agency award each year. As part of the solar roof program, IBC SOLAR has installed photovoltaic systems on the roofs of the German school in Rome Lisbon., as well as the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in Bangalore In 2008 IBC solar has entered into partnership with Indian company Refex Energy to explore opportunities in India.


Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen

Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen (born 1941, Dutch East Indies) is a consultant in chemistry and energy systems.
Storm van Leeuwen received his Master of Science, physical chemistry, at the Technical University Eindhoven. He is a senior scientist at Ceedata Consultants. He also develops courses for chemistry teachers for the Open University at Heerlen. He is the secretary of the Dutch Association of the Club of Rome. His two fields of expertise are technology assessment and life cycle analyses of energy systems, focussed on sustainability aspects. He published numerous reports and articles on various topics related to energy and environment, also in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Nuclear energy study.
He is best known for the paper "Nuclear power the energy balance" that he wrote with Philip Smith (also named "Stormsmith studies"), where they analyzed the energy payback from the entire nuclear power system. The energy inputs were calculated based on various assumptions and guesses about the technologies used in uranium production, rather than actually measuring them. They concluded that the major parameter determining the energy balance was the grade of the uranium ore, and ore grades lower than 180 ppm do not yield an energy gain when used in the nuclear fuel cycle.
The study was heavily criticized, such as a rebuttal by researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute.
With further criticism from Sevior and Flitney who issued the following statement:
"We compared the predicted energy cost [using Storm van Leeuwen's study] of Uranium mining and milling for Ranger, Olympic Dam and Rössing to the energy consumption as reported. All are significantly over predicted (5 PJ, 60 PJ and 69 PJ vs 0.8 PJ, 5 PJ and 1 PJ respectively). [...]"
"The energy consumption is predicted to be so large that is comparable to the energy consumption of a particular sub-section of the economy. In the case of Rössing, the over prediction is larger than the energy consumption of the entire country of Namibia."
Storm van Leeuwen noted that :
"The method of Sevior and Flitney based on financial data appears to me full of hidden assumptions, bookkeeping problems, statistical pitfalls and uncertainties."
The paper has been used by anti-nuclear organizations to claim that nuclear power is not clean enough to be considered a part of a clean energy mix.
Other papers.
Storm van Leeuwen also presented his previous work as part of another non-peer reviewed controversial paper "Secure Energy? Civil Nuclear Power, Security and Global Warming", published by a think tank, the Oxford Research Group, an institute unaffiliated with Oxford university, in which it argues nuclear power is not a long-term reducer of greenhouse gas emissions.
His original results has been used in a study -" Life cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy: A review. Energy Conversion and Management -" with several modifications.
Storm van Leeuwen is recognized by Open Democracy as one of their notable authors.
Personal life.
Storm van Leeuwen lives in Chaam with his wife, the artist .


Datang International Power Generation Company

Datang International Power Generation Company Limited (,), simply Datang International Power or Datang Power, is one of the five largest state-owned power producers in China, especially its position in Northern China. It is engaged in the development and operation of power plants, the sale of electricity and thermal power, and the repair and maintenance of power equipment and power-related technical services.
Datang Power owns four operating power plants and managed 17 power companies, with total installed capacity amounted to 15,410 megawatts (MW) at the end of mid-2006.
Datang Power was incorporated on 13 December 1994. The state-owned enterprise has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange since 21 March 1997.


RATCH-Australia

RATCH-Australia Corporation (RAC) is an Australian electricity generation company. It is a subsidiary of RATCH Group (formerly known as Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Company), a public company listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. RATCH-Australia owns both renewable energy and fossil fuel power stations in Australia.
History.
In 2007, Transfield Services spun-off its infastructure assets into the Transfield Services Infrastructure Fund. In November 2007, it acquired five further power generation assets from Stanwell Corporation and Tarong Energy.
RATCH-Australia was established in July 2011 when its parent company bought an 80% stake in Transfield Services Infrastructure Fund via a scheme of arrangement.
Power stations owned by RATCH-Australia are:


Reciprocating compressor

A reciprocating compressor or piston compressor is a positive-displacement compressor that uses pistons driven by a crankshaft to deliver gases at high pressure.
The intake gas enters the suction manifold, then flows into the compression cylinder where it gets compressed by a piston driven in a reciprocating motion via a crankshaft, and is then discharged. Applications include oil refineries, gas pipelines, chemical plants, natural gas processing plants, air conditioning, and refrigeration plants. One specialty application is the blowing of plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
In the ionic liquid piston compressor many seals and bearings were removed in the design as the ionic liquid does not mix with the gas. Service life is about 10 times longer than a regular diaphragm compressor with reduced maintenance during use, energy costs are reduced by as much as 20%. The heat exchangers that are used in a normal piston compressor are removed as the heat is removed in the cylinder itself where it is generated. Almost 100% of the energy going into the process is being used with little energy wasted as reject heat.


Blackwater, New Mexico

Blackwater, New Mexico is the designation of a HVDC back-to-back facility for the power exchange between the asynchronous power grids of Texas and New Mexico. It was built by Brown Boveri in 1985 and can transfer a power up to 200 megawatts. The used voltage is 57 kV.


Northwest Territories Power Corporation

The Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) is an electric utility in the Northwest Territories of Canada. NTPC was formed in 1988 to acquire and operate the former assets of the Northern Canada Power Commission in the Northwest Territories, including what is now Nunavut. Since 2007, NTPC is organised as a subsidiary of the Northwest Territories Hydro Corporation.
76% of NTPC's electrical generation is in the form of Hydro electricity. Hydro production has increased approximately 15% since 1990/91, reducing demand on diesel production and lower GHG emissions by 58% of 1990/91 levels. This has led NTPC to be recognized as a Gold Champion Level Reporter by the Canadian voluntary Challenge and Registry for seven consecutive years, including a leadership award and an honourable mention.
NTPC sells electricity wholesale to Northland Utilities, a private company majority-owned by ATCO, which provides electricity in Yellowknife and Hay River. Liquid natural gas and diesel are used to generate electricity in Inuvik. All other communities served by NTPC generate power using diesel.


Rapid Electronics

Rapid Electronics is a UK distributor of electronic components and educational products, and supporter of science, engineering and educational initiatives, based in Colchester, Essex.
History.
Rapid Electronics was established by Mike Lee and Chris Stevenson in 1979. The company at this time was based in a converted barn above a garage at Aylesford, Kent
and held stock of around 200 products.
Rapid started by advertising in the retail electronics press to generate sales and a small single sheet catalogue was mailed to customers.
From 1981 the focus was developing sales into electronics departments at universities and colleges and this strategy was successful over the next 10 years.
Due to expansion the company moved to Boxted in Essex in 1983 and continued to grow. Increasing sales led to a number of further moves to larger premises in the Colchester area, culminating in the building of the current 18,000sq.ft premises in Severalls Lane, Colchester.
In late 2012 the company became part of the German-owned Conrad Electronic and by 2014 Rapid had increased its stock-holding to over 100,000 products. Employing around 150 people, the company is currently located in premises close to the A12 and the Colchester Community Stadium.
Products.
The company's core products are electrical components such as resistors, capacitors and LEDs.
Customers.
Among the company's customers are electrical contractors, design engineers and assembly manufacturers, users of open source programming hardware such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, makers of audio equipment, amateur radio and model railway enthusiasts..
Rapid Electronics is also a supplier to primary schools, secondary schools and further education institutions in the UK, specialising in equipment for the science, electronics and technology areas of the National Curriculum.
Educational initiatives.
From 2004 to 2013 Rapid Electronics partnered Toyota Manufacturing UK developing and co-ordinating the Toyota Technology Challenge, latterly known as the Toyota STEM Challenge. Pupils designed, built and raced environmentally friendly vehicles using solar power or PIC microcontroller technology. Rapid helps co-ordinate the UK Championships for the VEX Robotics Design System, an educational robotics platform, alongside other partners such as National Grid plc and Teach Design. The company has supported many educational projects, initiatives and competitions, including Near Space school projects, the Jaguar Maths in Motion Challenge, the Suffolk Creative Computing Club, the Formula Gravity racing project and individual schools in robotics and science themed competitions. Rapid also provides resources and technical support to the Young Engineers organisation, which runs a network of engineering challenges and clubs across the UK.


Transmission System Operator (Albania)

The transmission system of electricity in Albania is run by the Transmission System Operator (OST), a public company with 100% state ownership. OST was created on 14 July 2004 as a result of the undergoing reforms within the Albanian Power Corporation. It split up as a vertically organized company into three separate units with the functions of generating, transmitting and distributing of the electricity.


Inox Wind

INOX Wind Limited () is an Indian wind energy service provider. Headquartered in Noida, India, the company is a subsidiary of Inox Group. Inox Wind Limited manufactures wind turbine generators, or WTGs, and provides services including wind resource assessment, site acquisition, infrastructure development, erection and
commissioning, and long term operations and maintenance of wind power projects. Inox Wind was ranked at 167th position in Business Today's list of 500 most valuable companies in India in 2015.
The company is listed on the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE:INOXWIND) and on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE:539083).
Inox Group.
Inox Wind Limited is part of the Inox Group of Companies. Inox Group has interests in various businesses including industrial gases, refrigerants, engineering plastics, chemicals, carbon credits, cryogenic engineering, renewable energy and entertainment. The INOX Group employs close to 9,000 people and has a distribution network that is spread across more than 50 countries. The Inox Group of Companies, besides Inox Wind Limited, includes Inox Air Products Limited, Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited, Inox India Limited, Inox Renewables Limited, and Inox Leisure Limited.
Manufacturing Facilities.
Inox Wind has three manufacturing plants in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The plant near Ahmedabad (Gujarat) manufactures Blades & Tubular Towers while Hubs & Nacelles are manufactured at the company’s facility at Una (Himachal Pradesh). The new integrated manufacturing facility at Barwani (Madhya Pradesh) manufactures blades, towers and will manufacture nacelles and hubs. The facility in Madhya Pradesh, which will be amongst the largest in the world, has doubled Inox Wind’s manufacturing capacity to 1,600 MW per annum.
Technology Partner.
Inox Wind has sourced technology from AMSC, Austria, a wholly owned subsidiary of USA based American Superconductor Corporation. Inox Wind has an exclusive and perpetual licence from AMSC to manufacture 2 MW wind turbines in India. AMSC provides wind turbine electronic controls and systems, designs and engineering services that reduce the cost of wind energy.
Products.
Inox Wind's product is the 2 MW DFIG (Double Fed Induction Generator). The company currently manufactures three variants of the 2 MW WTG- the 93.3 meter rotor diameter, the 100 meter rotor diameter, and the 113 meter rotor diameter.


McNeill HVDC Back-to-back station

McNeill HVDC Back-to-back station is an HVDC back-to-back station at 50°35'56"N 110°1'25"W, which interconnects the power grids of the Canadian provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan and went in service in 1989. McNeill HVDC back-to-back station is the most northerly of a series of HVDC interconnectors between the unsynchronised eastern and western AC systems of the United States and Canada. The station, which was built by GEC-Alstom, can transfer a maximum power of 150 MW at a DC voltage of 42 kV. The station is unusual in many respects and contained several "firsts" for HVDC.
Most notably, the McNeill station was the first HVDC installation to dispense with the DC smoothing reactor, a component which most engineers consider as an absolute must at HVDC plants. Even today, only a small number of back to back HVDC stations (and no point-to-point transmission schemes) have been built without DC smoothing reactors.
The McNeill station was also notable for operating with an exceptionally low Short Circuit Ratio (SCR). The SCR is a measure of how strong or weak the connected AC system is. Most HVDC schemes using line-commutated converters operate with a SCR of at least 3, but the McNeill scheme was designed to operate with an Effective Short Circuit Ratio (ESCR – a measure which subtracts the harmonic filters from the evaluation of SCR and is more meaningful on very weak AC systems) of less than 1.0 on the Saskatchewan side. This is one of the lowest ESCR values ever achieved with a line-commutated HVDC converter.
McNeill was also the first HVDC station to use three-phase, four-winding converter transformers. The transformers, which are connected to 138 kV on the Alberta side and 230 kV on the Saskatchewan side, are each equipped with a 25 kV tertiary winding (to which the harmonic filters are connected) in addition to the two valve windings. This arrangement allowed the harmonic filters to be switched by vacuum switchgear which is more tolerant of large numbers of operations than high-voltage switchgear connected directly to the 138 kV or 230 kV busbars. This was a significant advantage since the extremely low short circuit ratio required the reactive power to be controlled within very tight limits, leading to frequent switching operations.
The 12 thyristor valves at each side are arranged in a conventional twelve-pulse bridge. The valves are cooled by a mixture of de-ionised water and ethylene glycol, which does not freeze at a temperature of -50°C. These were the first thyristor valves ever to use water/glycol mixtures directly inside the valve, with no separate secondary cooling circuit. The valves use 100mm, 5.2 kV electrically triggered thyristors with 11 in series per valve on the Alberta side and 12 in series per valve on the Saskatchewan side.
In January 2012, Alstom was awarded a contract to replace the analogue control system by a more modern digital control system.


Todd Energy


8974

8974 / X-2159 is a power tetrode designed for megawatt power levels in industrial and broadcast applications.
Specifications.
The 8974 is an external anode tube made of metal and ceramic. It has an overall height of 23.75 inches (603 mm), a diameter of 17.03 inches (433 mm), and weighs 175 pounds (80 kg). It contains two directly heated thoriated-tungsten filament rated at 16.3 volts at approx. 1300 amperes for both filaments. The anode (plate) is designed to dissipate 1.5 MW. The tube may be operated as a class C amplifier in CW mode, where a single tube with an anode voltage of 22.5 kV DC can provide up to 2,158 kW of RF power.
Internal construction.
The thoriated-tungsten filament consists of two independent sections mounted on water-cooled supports. The two filaments may be excited in quadrature to reduce hum contributed by an AC power source. Each filament is rated at a nominal value of 18.5 V at approx. 650 A for a total of over 20 kW of filament power required when the tube is in operation.
History.
Experimental type X2159 was assigned to the development of a power tetrode by Eimac (then a division of Varian Associates) on May 28, 1970, and the design engineer was Sterling G. McNees. This electron tube was intended for use in very high power medium-frequency broadcast service and VLF communications equipment and as a pulse modulator (as a switch tube). The EIA (Electronic Industries Alliance) designation 8974 was assigned to this as it became a standard product. The initial technical data sheet was printed in July 1971.
Continental Electronics of Dallas, Texas, designed two 8974s (one as PA and the other as modulator) into their D323 series 1 megawatt AM transmitters which were sold primarily into the middle East, where stations were built to cover large geographical areas. The 8974 is still used in the same transmitters , over 30 years later. The 8974 was also used as the basis for the development of several large tetrode switch tubes capable of operating at anode voltage up to 175 kV DC.
Cooling.
The anode is cooled by circulated water via two flanges located at the top of the tube. The heat is transferred to the outside environment using a radiator, or to a secondary cooling system using a heat exchanger. Controlling the purity of the water is important to prevent the formation of copper oxide which would reduce the cooling efficiency. Impurities could also cause electrolysis which could destroy the cooling passages. The plumbing connections for the water inlet and outlet are made at the anode, where a high DC voltage (up to 22 kV DC) is present. Forced air is used to provide additional cooling to the filament and grid connections at the bottom of the tube.


Migma

Migma, sometimes migmatron or migmacell, was a proposed colliding beam fusion reactor designed by Bogdan Maglich in 1969. Migma uses self-intersecting beams of ions from small particle accelerators to force the ions to fuse. Similar systems using larger collections of particles, up to microscopic dust sized, were referred to as "macrons". Migma was an area of some research in the 1970s and early 1980s, but lack of funding precluded further development.
Conventional fusion.
Fusion takes place when atoms come into close proximity and the nuclear strong force pulls their nuclei together. Counteracting this process is the fact that the nuclei are all positively charged, and thus repel each other due to the electrostatic force. In order for fusion to occur, the nuclei must have enough energy to overcome this coulomb barrier. The barrier is lowered for atoms with less positive charge, those with the fewest protons, and the strong force is increased with additional nucleons, the total number of protons and neutrons. This means that a combination of deuterium and tritium has the lowest coulomb barrier, at about 100 keV (see requirements for fusion).
When the fuel is heated to high energies the electrons disassociate from the nuclei, which are left as ions in a gas-like plasma. Any particles in a gas are distributed across a wide range of energies in a spectrum known as the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. At any given temperature the majority of the particles are at lower energies, with a "long tail" containing smaller numbers of particles at much higher energies. So while 100 KeV represents a temperature of over one billion degrees, in order to produce fusion events the fuel does not have to be heated to this temperature as a whole. Even at a much lower temperature, the rate of fusion may be high enough to provide useful power output as long as it is confined for some period of time. Increased density also increases the rate, as the energy from the reactions will heat the surrounding fuel and potentially incite fusion in it as well. The combination of temperature, density and confinement time is known as the Lawson criterion.
Two primary approaches have developed to attack the fusion energy problem. In the inertial confinement approach the fuel is quickly squeezed to extremely high densities, increasing the internal temperature in the process. There is no attempt to maintain these conditions for any period of time, the fuel explodes outward as soon as the force is released. The confinement time is on the order of nanoseconds, so the temperatures and density have to be very high in order to any appreciable amount of the fuel to undergo fusion. This approach has been successful in producing fusion reactions, but to date the devices that can provide the compression, typically lasers, require more energy than the reactions produce.
In the more widely studied magnetic confinement approach, the plasma, which is electrically charged, is confined with magnetic fields. The fuel is slowly heated until some of the fuel in the tail of the temperature distribution starts undergoing fusion. At the temperatures and densities that are possible using magnets the fusion process is fairly slow, so this approach requires long confinement times on the order of tens of seconds, or even minutes. Confining a gas at millions of degrees for this sort of time scale has proven difficult, although modern experimental machines are approaching the conditions needed for net power production.
Migma fusion.
The colliding beam approach avoided the problem of heating the mass of fuel to these temperatures by accelerating the ions directly in a particle accelerator.
The simple way to make such a system is to take two accelerators and aim them at each other. However, the chance that two ions will collide is infinitesimal; most of the ions would fly by each other and their energy would be lost. In order to make such a system practical in energy terms, the particles need to be recirculated so they have many chances to collide. One way to do this is to use a storage ring, but those ions that come "close" to a reaction scatter out at high angles that make them exit the rings. Simple mathematics showed this approach would not work; the loss rate from these near misses would always be much higher than the energy gained from fusion reactions.
Maglich's concept modified the arrangement based on a new particle storage concept he had co-invented, known as the "precetron". In a typical storage ring concept, the particles are fired into the ring "end on" with a specific energy so they follow the path of the ring. In contrast, in the precetron the storage area is a magnetic mirror. In most magnetic mirror arrangements the average particle energy is relatively low and the ions and electrons have relatively small orbits around the magnetic lines of force, much smaller in radius than the diameter of the mirror as a whole. In the precetron, the ions have much higher energies, and thus much larger orbits, taking up a significant portion of the mirror's diameter, about to . In this arrangement, the ions will tend to move towards the center of the mirror volume, instead of reflecting back and forth between the ends as in the classical mirror setup.
Additionally, due to the arrangement of the fields, with the field being stronger at the outside of the volume, the ion orbits will precess around the inner area. This causes the circular path to move its center of rotation. For instance, if the particle is initially fired into the storage area so that it is orbiting around the bottom half of the mirror area, it will slowly move so the orbit is on one side, then the top, the other side, and then the bottom again. If one traces out the path of a single ion over time, it forms a pattern similar to that of a Spirograph, creating a series of circles that fill the volume.
The key to using this concept in the migma system was to fire the ions into the chamber with the right energy so that their paths passed through the geometric center of the mirror. After a short time, this orbit would precess away from the initial entry point. When another ion is fired in, it takes up the original orbit. Over time, the chamber would fill with ions orbiting within what was effectively an infinite number of storage rings all intersecting in the center. And because they met in the center, ions on opposite sided of the chamber were moving in opposite directions when they met, so a single accelerator produced an effect similar to two accelerators and two storage rings in the conventional layout.
A great advantage of this approach is that forward scattering of the ions in "missed" reactions would simply move them to a different orbit, but their natural movement in the mirror field would rapidly bring them back to the center. It was only those ions that scattered to a large off-axis angle that would escape. As a result, it was expected that any given ion would take about 108 orbits through the reaction area before scattering out of the system. The term "migma", from the Greek word for "mixture", was chosen to distinguish this mass of orbiting ions from the plasma in conventional machines.
Reactors.
A series of four Migma reactors were built; the original Migma (retroactively, Migma I) in 1973, Migma II in 1975, Migma III in 1976, and eventually culminating with the Migma IV in 1982. These devices were relatively small, only a few meters long along the accelerator beamline with a disk-shaped target chamber about in diameter and thick. Migma testbed devices used accelerators of about 1 MeV, to 2 MeV.
The Migma designs aimed at using aneutronic fuels, most notably D-He3 reaction, which requires much higher temperatures to reach ignition than the typical D-T reaction. Migma II managed to reach the required temperature, about 15 billion degrees, in 1975. Migma IV set a record for confinement time of 25 seconds in 1982, as well as the record fusion triple product (density × energy-confinement-time × mean energy) of  keV sec cm−3, a record that was not approached by a conventional tokamak until JET achieved  keV sec cm−3 in 1987.
To make a Migma large enough to produce net energy, the triple product reached by Migma IV would have to be increased between 100 and 1000 times. Maglich attempted to secure funding for a follow-on design for some time, unsuccessfully. According to an article in "The Scientist", Maglich has been involved in an acrimonious debate with the various funding agencies since the 1980s.
Problems.
When the Migma design was first being considered, it was modelled using particle accelerator techniques. There was no deep consideration of the "beta" of the design, the ratio of the magnetic field to the plasma pressure. In conventional designs, like the traditional mirror, beta is a key performance figure that indicates how powerful the magnets would need to be for any given amount of fuel inside the reactor. The cost of the magnets scales with the power, so this gives a rough estimate of the economics of the reactor. In Migma, there is no plasma in the conventional sense, so it was not clear that this consideration applied - as long as one matched the field to the energy of the ions so they remained confined, the technical needs were met.
But the continual feeding of ions leads to an obvious problem, the reaction chamber would become increasingly positively charged. This produced an outward pressure that was similar to the pressure from a conventional plasma caused by the ideal gas law. Eventually, this pressure would overwhelm the magnetic field, regardless of the energy of the particles. To stay below this limit, the density of the particles had to be very low, about that of a typical mirror design.
One could offset this effect by injecting electrons as well as ions, so that the macroscopic volume is neutralized. However, this leads to two new effects that cause energy to be lost from the reactor. One is that the electrons will randomly impact the ions, causing them to neutralize, meaning they are no longer subject to the magnetic field and free to leave the reaction chamber. Even when such neutralization did not occur, the impacts between the electrons and ions would cause the electrons to release energy through both bremsstrahlung and synchrotron radiation.
At some critical electron density, these losses will be greater than the amount of energy fed into the system by the accelerators. To address this, the designs intended to operate with very low electron counts, on the order of one electron for every 100 ions. This leads to a significant limitation on the possible operating parameters of the design; if the electron counts are low the density of the fuel must be low to avoid the positive charge overwhelming the magnets, but if the electron density is increased to allow higher fuel density, the losses begin to increase through electron effects.
In order to improve this figure, it was suggested that a second accelerator fire electrons into the chamber as well; if electrons met ions they would neutralize, and as such, they would no longer be subject to the magnetic fields and leave the chamber. The key to making this work would be to send the electrons into the center, where the slower ions that were no longer useful were massing. Free electrons were also to be scavenged by devices in the reactor chamber.
In the late 1990s, a generalized consideration of these issues suggested that the Migma was not alone in this problem; when one considers bremsstrahlung in non-thermalized fuels, it appears that no system running on aneutronic fuels can approach ignition, that any system using non-thermalized fuels (including Migma) appear to be able to cover their losses. The only approach that appears to have a theoretical possibility of working is the D-T or perhaps D-D reaction in a thermalized plasma mass.


Kosova e Re

Kosova e Re, also known as the New Kosovo project, is a plan of the Government of the Republic of Kosovo to build a new 500 MW power plant near Prishtina, to rehabilitate the existing Kosovo B power plant and completely shut down the Kosovo A power plant which is considered the largest source of pollution in Kosovo. It also includes the development of a new lignite mine in order to meet the needs of the Kosovo B and the newly constructed power plant. It is estimated to cost US$2 billion.
The government has identified the need for additional generation capacities to address long-term concerns about the country's power supply security. Government policy goals, also presented in all Kosovo Energy Strategies, apart from the plans for new generation electricity capacities, also aim at involving the private sector in the Kosova e Re Power Plant (KRPP) infrastructure project. It includes development, design, construction, financing, ownership, maintenance and operation in accordance with IED Best Available Techniques (BAT).
The Kosova e Re Power Plant will provide the country with reliable power supply, the bedrock of future investments that will foster economic development in Kosovo. The construction of the plant will create opportunities for new jobs, as well as long-term employment upon the start of plant operations.
The mission of the new unit is to replace the old generation units of the Kosovo A TPP and increase the security of supply, by creating a sustainable source of basic energy. Reliance on domestic resources, such as lignite and renewable energy sources (RES), avoids dependence on imports and price unpredictability on the regional market.
The KRPP will be a key asset in strategic terms, as it will cover almost half the power demand in the country, and will be the long-term source of thermal energy for municipal heating in the surrounding municipalities.
In 2015, the Government of Kosovo awarded ContourGlobal (CG) the status of the preferred provider for the development of the KRPP. The Government of Kosovo and ContourGlobal signed the Commercial Agreements for the construction of the Kosova e Re Power Plant in December 2017. CG is a US-based company specializing in securing and developing long-term energy production for different types of electricity generation and geographic locations.
The KRPP will be built in line with the EU Directive on Environmental Standards for Industrial Emissions and 2017 BATs, with a minimum of 40% efficiency with super-critical technology. The KRPP will be built with full financing from private investments. However, according to the signed Agreements, this power plant will be transferred to the Government of Kosovo after 20 years, at no cost.
The KRPP will simultaneously address the solution of a range of energy sector issues, but also wider issues for the country, such as the security of power supply, the direct impact on sustainability and economic development, as well as the significant improvement of social and environmental aspects.
In 2020, ContourGlobal withdrew from the project and it appears likely that the new power station will not now be built.
History.
Plans to address Kosovo's energy situation began in the early 2000s and originally envisioned a 2,000-MW lignite plant that would allow the country to export energy to its neighbours. The government presented the plan in July 2009 and it suggested that all work would be finished by 2015 or at least by 2017. However, the works have not started, mainly because of the opposition from non-governmental organizations. Over the years political and investment setbacks have caused the project to cut down in size.
Financing.
To attract investors whom are concerned about political or credit risks, the World Bank offered US$60 million in loan guarantees that would set in if the government failed to meet obligations such as supplying coal or electricity. This means that the World Bank, as well as the biggest shareholder - the United States of America, will need to make an exception in their clean-energy commitments. On the 15th of January 2013, representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) met with Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi, expressing their interest to support the New Kosovo project. However, on December the 10th 2013 the EBRD employed a new strategy which decreased funding for the coal plants, with exception of rare circumstances. If Kosova e Re will meet the criteria of a "rare curcumstance" remains to be seen.
Supporters.
Kosovo’s low GDP per capita of US$3,894 makes it one of Europe’s poorest countries. A major obstacle for the economic growth and development of Kosovo is the inadequate and unreliable electricity supply. The country has the world's fifth-largest reserves of lignite which could, with the current consumption levels, supply the country for another 1500 years. Supporters of the project (at the forefront being the World Bank and the U.S. government) see lignite exploitation as the quickest way out of poverty and a way to procure Kosovo’s energy independence and consequently its energy security.
There are also those who support Kosova e Re from the environmental stand point. In the report of Kosova e Re by the Expert Panel of the World Bank, reviewed that the project discovered that particulate matter emissions produced by Kosova e Re would be reduced by more than 90%, Sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide reduced by around 70% and would be carbon neutral, if not carbon reducing, for each MWh produced. Kjorton Bjornson from the European Commission in July 2009 expressed support for the construction of the new power plant with the view to shut down Kosovo A plant. However, the European Parliament resolution on the integration process of Kosovo into the EU stated that the financial aid provided by the EU should be devoted to supporting renewable energy projects to close down its two highly polluting coal plants. It calls on the European Commission to take action to contest plans such as Kosova e Re that run counter to EU climate commitments.
Opposition.
Certain groups and organisations are of the view that the new power plant would mean the continuation of traditional coal-based electricity production. Today Kosovo wastes 30% of available energy due to energy efficiency, 37% due to technical losses, the outdated electrical grid and other commercial losses, such as theft. A study by Dr. Daniel Kammen shows that "Kosovo can cover 38% of its energy consumption from renewable sources". He also specified that this scenario, without including the Kosova e Re power plant, would create 27% more jobs than current scenarios. Energy Community commitments cite that Kosovo needs to source 25% of overall energy from renewable sources by 2020, which will be harder to achieve if the new power plant is to be constructed. The Kosovo Civil Society Consortium for Sustainable Development (KOSID) are questioning the necessity of the costly power plant and instead propose energy efficiency programmes, which tackle of energy losses, renewable energy development and the rehabilitation of the existing Kosovo B Power Station. They also raise the issue of the environmental and social impacts the new project would have on Kosovars. There are 835 deaths per year in Kosovo due to air pollution, of which the lignite power plants are responsible for a substantial proportion. A new power station could make matters worse. KOSID also stressed the issue of water and agricultural land shortage and the resettlement of the local population which consists mostly of farmers who will need compensation for the lost land and livelihoods


Hub Power Company

Hub Power Company Limited, () colloquially known as HUBCO, is the first and largest Pakistani Independent Power Producer (IPP) with a combined installed power generation capacity of 2920 MW. HUBCO is the only power producer in Pakistan with four projects listed in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), out of which three are under construction — Thar Energy Limited, Thalnova Power Thar (Pvt) Ltd and Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company whereas China Power Hub Generation Company (CPHGC) is already contributing electricity to the national grid.
Organisation structure.
Subsidiaries
Associates
Management team
Corporate social responsibility.
The company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program focuses on:
The company has set up initiatives to develop communities around its plants. It provides education and healthcare by setting up schools and medical facilities. The Company improves the physical infrastructure of the local communities by providing clean water and installing solar systems. It helps improve the livelihood of the local populace through projects such as the HUBCO Rahnuma Program where employees volunteer their time, skills, and efforts to develop communities near plants. HUBCO aims to hire local workers and in line with this provides vocational training programs.


Electricity sector in Paraguay

Paraguay is one of the few countries in Latin America that has maintained an integrated public monopoly on electricity. Hydropower comprises nearly 100 percent of electricity in Paraguay; 90 percent of generated energy is exported, with neighboring Argentina and Brazil receiving the majority. Paraguay is one of the world's largest electricity net exporters.
Because of the dominance of hydroelectricity, tariffs (mostly residential) are remarkably below the averages for the region. However, despite the abundance of resources, the Paraguayan electricity system faces difficulty due to the lack of investment in transmission and distribution networks. In addition, distribution losses are among the highest in the region.
Electricity supply and demand.
Installed capacity and generation.
Paraguay is the only country in Latin America with almost 100 percent hydroelectric generation capacity (8,116 MW) in 2005.
Paraguay operates two binational hydroelectric dams. Itaipu dam, by far the largest power station in the country, is operated with
Brazil and has an installed capacity of 7000 MW (86 percent of Paraguay's generation capacity). Yacyretá, the second largest hydroelectric facility, has an installed capacity of 900 MW (11 percent), and is operated with Argentina. A third plant, Acaray has an installed capacity of 210 MW (3 percent). Thermal plants contribute less than 0.1 percent.
All of Paraguay's electricity for domestic consumption comes from a single facility, the binational 14 GW Itaipu hydroelectric dam.
"Source": ESMAP, 2006. Installed capacity shown for Itaipu and Yacyretá refers only to the Parguayan share in these plants.
While total generation amounted to 51.17 TWh in 2005, consumption was only 5.01 TWh, with exports as high as 43.8 TWh.
Demand.
In 2005, total electricity consumed in Paraguay was 5.01 TWh, which corresponds to 849 kWh per capita. Electricity generated by Itaipu and Acaray, located in the East of the country, is transported to the West (to the Asunción area), where over 60% of the total national consumption is located.
Electricity consumption by consumer group is divided as follows:
In 2004, the country consumed only 16% of its 50% share of Itaipu's production, exporting the rest to Brazil. As for Yacyreta, Paraguay consumes less than 1% of its share, exporting the rest to Argentina.
The electricity interconnections that allow power exchanges with Brazil and Argentina are:
"Source": ESMAP, 2006
Access to electricity.
In 2005, almost 90% of the population in Paraguay had access to electricity, which is just slightly below than the 94.6% average for LAC
The 2002 Census revealed that 87% of the households without electricity were located in rural areas, where access was about 77%. Rural coverage varies considerably among the different regions of the country. It is lowest in the remote and sparsely populated Chaco, or Western region. The table below shows rural coverage by Department for 2002:
See also:Departments of Paraguay (including a map)
"Source": Pulfer, 2005 (from 2002 Census)
Since 2004, the National Electricity Administration (ANDE) has been carrying out a Program to Recover Distribution Works under the Self-Help System ("Sistema de Autoayuda"), which aims at the regularization of all the low and medium voltage distribution networks. This program, with a 10-year time-horizon, is implemented according to priorities defined by the conservation status of the networks involved. Under this program, installations that do not comply with current ANDE's rules are replaced.
Service quality.
Interruption frequency and duration.
In 2005, the average number of interruptions per subscriber was 16.4, while duration of interruptions per subscriber was 7.58 hours. While the number of interruptions is just slightly above than the weighted average for LAC, 13 interruptions, the duration is well below the weighted average of 14 hours.
Blackouts.
Despite consuming less than 6 TWh per year and exporting close to 45 TWh per year, Paraguay faces blackouts as well as a serious risk of suffering an energy crisis. This is the result of the limitations of both the transmission and distribution systems. The ceiling of the system is placed by ANDE's at 1,700 MW, with demand above 1,500 MW in 2008. Transmission capacity is urgently needed to avoid a supply crisis in a system in which quality and an adequate technical service is practically nonexistent.
Different authors believe that the price received for the electricity sold to Brazil (from Paraguay's share in Itaipu) and also to Argentina to some extent (from its share in Yacyreta) is currently too low. The “fair price” established by the Itaipu Treaty was conceived on the basis of a “compensation for concession of energy” and not on the basis of a commercial exchange. This price has remained very low (about US$2.81 per MWh). It is argued that, if this price was more in line with actual electricity prices in the Brazilian market, Paraguay would have enough resources to strengthen its electricity transmission capacity.
Distribution and transmission losses.
In 2005, distribution losses in Paraguay were has high as 31%, well above the 13.5% weighted average for LAC and up from about 22% in 2001
System losses have become a serious problem in the last few years, having followed a continuous upward trend. The highest percentage of losses occurs in the National Interconnected System (SIN), while the remaining corresponds to the bi-national enterprises. In the SIN, distribution losses represented 23% of the total in 2003, while transmission losses, according to ANDE, were 7.3%. ANDE has established a 23% target for electricity losses for the year 2010.
Responsibilities in the electricity sector.
Responsibilities in the Paraguayan electricity sector are concentrated in a single, vertically integrated public monopoly, the National Electricity Administration ("Administración Nacional de Electricidad", ANDE).
Policy and regulation.
Law 167/93 indicates that the Vice ministry of Mines and Energy (under the Ministry of Public Works and Communication) is responsible for establishing and guiding energy policy, as well as for the study of the technical, economic, financial and legal aspects that promote energy use. However, the Vice ministry does not have the adequate resources to effectively perform its functions.
In practice, all the energy responsibilities are concentrated in ANDE, which is the "de facto" electricity regulator and provider. ANDE also elaborates the tariff structure, which is then analyzed and approved by the Economic Council of the Executive Power. The Council usually sets lower tariffs to the ones proposed by ANDE, which leads to a lack of resources for the necessary investment for adequate performance of the electricity system.
Generation, transmission and distribution.
ANDE controls the country's entire electricity market, including generation, transmission and distribution. ANDE operates only one hydroelectric dam, Acaray, and six thermal power plants, with total installed capacity of 220 MW. It is also responsible for Paraguay's share of Itaipú and Yacyretá, the two bi-national hydroelectric facilities (See bi-national facilities above).
ANDE operates of transmission lines in the Interconnected National System, divided in 6 subsystems, and of distribution lines. It is also responsible for all of the distribution, with two exceptions: CLYFSA ("Compañía de Luz y Fuerza, S.A."), which has a concession to distribute and commercialize electricity in Villarrica, and the "Empresas Distribuidoras Menonitas del Chaco Central".
History of the electricity sector.
Hydroelectric plants.
Itaipu dam.
In April 1973, the governments of Paraguay and Brazil signed the Itaipu Treaty, by which it was decided to create a binational entity to hydroelectric use of the Paraná River. This entity was constituted by ANDE (Paraguay) and ELECTROBRAS (Brazil). US$100 million were contributed in equal parts by both companies.
Yacyretá Dam.
In December 1973, the governments of Argentina and Paraguay signed the Yacyreta Treaty, by which ANDE and "Agua y Energía" constituted the Binational Entity, whose aim is the hydroelectric use of the Paraná river. US$100 million was contributed in equal parts by each company.
Corpus Christi.
In 1971, Paraguay and Argentina created the River Parana Joint Commission ("Comisión Mixta del Río Paraná", COMIP), which started to carry out different studies (pre-feasibility, environmental, etc.) for the Corpus project, to be located upstream of the Paraná river, close to the towns of Corpus (in the Argentina Misiones Province and Puerto Bella Vista in Paraguay. In the mid-1980s, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil signed a tripartite agreement that established the operating height of the project, which would allow to bring into line the operation of Corpus with those of Yacyreta and Itaipu.
The different alternatives for this project are still under study. As a large hydroelectric project, with installed capacity of about 3,000 MW and annual generation of about 19,000 GWh, Corpus is a controversial project that is opposed both at the regional and social levels. In April 1996, in a plebiscite in the Misiones Province, the construction of the dam was opposed by almost 89% of the voters.
Tariffs and subsidies.
Tariffs.
In 2006, the average national tariff in Paraguay was US$0.080 per kWh Tariffs for the different consumer groups were:
Subsidies.
In November 2004, the Paraguayan Government approved Law 2,501, which broadened the electricity social tariff applied by ANDE. The social tariff is applied to residential users below 150kWh of monthly consumption. Currently, about 37% of total customers benefit from this tariff. ANDE estimates that this share will gradually increase to 56% of the total.
Investment and financing.
Investments for maintenance and expansion of the necessary assets to provide electricity service have been executed with the support of multilateral credit institutions.
Summary of private participation in the electricity sector.
The National Electricity Administration ("Administración Nacional de Electricidad", ANDE), Paraguay's state-owned utility, controls the country's entire electricity market, including generation, transmission and distribution.
Two small companies buy electricity from ANDE and have concessions to distribute and sell it: CLYFSA (Compañía de Luz y Fuerza, S.A.) in Villarrica, and the "Empresas Distribuidoras Menonitas del Chaco Central".
Electricity and the environment.
Responsibility for the environment.
The Environmental Directorate ("Secretaría del Ambiente", SEAM) is the institution in charge of environmental issues in Paraguay, focusing on natural resources management and preservation.
Greenhouse gas emissions.
Paraguay emitted 3.85 million tons of CO2 in 2005, which corresponds to just 0.61 tCO2 per capita annually, the lowest rate in the LAC region after Haiti's.
CDM projects in electricity.
Currently (August 2008), there are no registered CDM projects in any sector in Paraguay. The low emission factor of a fully hydroelectric system is most likely the reason for the absence of this type of projects in the electricity sector.
External assistance.
Inter-American Development Bank.
Currently, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is contributing funds and assistance to one project in the electricity sector in Paraguay:
The IDB is also providing technical assistance under two activities:
Sources.
Casco Carreras, 2008. "Presente y Futuro del Sector Energético Nacional". Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
ESMAP, 2006. "Estrategia para el desarrollo del sector eléctrico del Paraguay".
Suarez Montorfano, 2007. "El Proyecto hidroeléctrico Corpus Christi"


955 acorn triode

The type 955 triode "acorn tube" is a small triode thermionic valve (vacuum tube in USA) designed primarily to operate at high frequency. Although data books specify an upper limit of 400–600 MHz, some circuits may obtain gain up to about 900 MHz. Interelectrode capacitances and Miller capacitances are minimized by the small dimensions of the device and the widely separated pins. The connecting pins are placed around the periphery of the bulb and project radially outward: this maintains short internal leads with low inductance, an important property allowing operation at high frequency. The pins fit a special socket fabricated as a ceramic ring in which the valve itself occupies the central space. The 955 was developed by RCA and was commercially available in 1935.
The 955 is one of about a dozen types of "acorn valve", so called because their size and shape is similar to the acorn (nut of the oak tree), introduced starting in 1935 and designed to work in the VHF range. The 954 and 956 types are sharp and remote cut-off pentodes, respectively, both also with indirect 6.3 V, 150 mA heaters. Types 957, 958 and 959 are for portable equipment and have 1.25 V NiCd battery heaters. The 957 is a medium-μ signal triode, the 958 is a transmitting triode with dual, paralleled filaments for increased emission, and the 959 is a sharp cut-off pentode like the 954. The 957 and 959 draw 50 mA heater current, the 958 twice as much. In 1942, the 958A with tightened emission specs was introduced after it turned out that 958s with excessively high emission kept working after the filament power was turned off, the filament still sufficiently heating on the anode current alone.
Pin connections.
When viewing the device from above (the end without the exhaust tip), the pins are arranged in a group of three and a group of two, starting with the centre pin in the group of three and going in a clockwise direction, the pins are "cathode, heater, grid, anode, heater".
Ratings.
The 955 is an "indirectly heated triode" with heater electrically isolated from the cathode. The heater has a 6.3 volt rating, which it shares with many other common thermionic valves/electron tubes, and it draws about 150 mA.
The maximum anode voltage is 250 V, with an anode current of 420 microamperes and anode load 250 kilohm, and the maximum anode current is 4.5 mA at a voltage of 180 V with an anode load of 20 kilohm. The 955 is designed to be used in the frequency range of 60–600 MHz (5-0.5 metres wavelength).
The amplification factor obtained is between 20 and 25 depending on details of the specific stage design and operating voltage.


Otter Tail Corporation

Otter Tail Corporation is an energy company based in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Its main subsidiary is the Otter Tail Power Company.
As of 2007, Otter Tail Power Company serves at least 423 towns at retail and delivers power to about 14 municipal utilities. The company currently has a workforce of over 750 employees, a generating capacity of 660 megawatts, and owns over of electrical power transmission lines (the majority of which are operated at 41.6 kV). The company serves 128,500 customers in North Dakota, Minnesota, and South Dakota.
History.
The company was incorporated in 1907 when funds were secured to begin construction of the Dayton Hollow Dam southwest of Fergus Falls. Once the dam came online in April 1909, the company transmitted power at 22 kV over a line to serve the customers of the Northern Light Electric Company at Wahpeton, North Dakota.
Shortly thereafter, contracts were secured to provide power at wholesale to the cities of Breckenridge and Fergus Falls, MN (the latter after their own municipal utility's dam failed). After connecting Foxhome, MN, to the system in 1912, the company connected or purchased electric distribution systems in 10 Minnesota towns (the most prominent being Elbow Lake and Morris, MN) and a second town in North Dakota (Fairmount) the following year. Northern Light Electric also merged with Otter Tail at this time and its owner came on board as the company's first general manager. The first South Dakota community served by the company was White Rock in 1915. By 1920, the company was serving approximately 44 towns, all but a handful of which were in or near Otter Tail County. However, the company quickly found its Minnesota service area hemmed in by neighboring utility companies that were also rushing to add territory. This led to the company expanding westward into and across much of eastern North Dakota, reaching Jamestown, ND by 1924 (the company was serving over 100 towns by this time). The company grew at an incredible rate over the next 5 years—reaching the Missouri River at Washburn in 1926 and approaching the Canada–US border by 1928. By the end of the 1920s, the company's service area had tripled to serve more than 310 towns. During the Great Depression, the company was apparently not as badly affected as some of its neighbors but was still forced to focus more on survival than growth. By 1939, the worst was past, and they were ready to move forward once more.
Between 1940 and 1944, Otter Tail added territory by merger or acquisition of 6 smaller power companies within or adjacent to its territory (almost all of who had corporate parents that were required to divest these properties due to passage of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935). These purchases increased its territory to its present size of , about the same size as the state of Wisconsin. The one exception in this territory is the Red River Valley between Grand Forks and Fargo, ND, which was then and still is served by Northern States Power Company (now Xcel Energy).
After the final major acquisition in 1944, the company had reached its 'maximum system' of 496 towns served at both retail and wholesale. As the company matured over the next several decades, the number of towns served within the region would shrink (mainly due to towns served at wholesale changing suppliers and some smaller retail towns dying out). A few towns were added between 1944 and 1968—the largest being the purchase of Fergus Falls' municipal utility in 1953 and the last addition being the transfer of several towns in Polk County, Minnesota, from Northern States Power Company when the 34.5 kV transmission line serving these towns approached its load limit.
A merger with Montana-Dakota Utilities was briefly explored in the late 1960s but was soon dropped due to all the regulatory hurdles involved. By the 1990s, flat revenues from the utility operations led the company to establish a subsidiary (Varistar) to acquire and oversee non-utility businesses. In 2001, the company changed its name to Otter Tail Corporation with the utility becoming a division within the company. In late 2008, the company completed a reorganization to realign the utility operations into a subsidiary within Otter Tail Corporation.
Hydropower.
In the beginning, Otter Tail Power built a series of hydroelectric plants to provide power for its system and these served the company well until its expansion in the 1920s outstripped the dams' capacity (steam provided the bulk of the company's power needs from then on). The company has grown to such a point that today only about 1% of the company's needs still comes from hydropower. The dams are: Dayton Hollow (1909 - southwest of Fergus Falls), Hoot Lake (1914 / 1918 - east Fergus Falls), Pisgah (1918 - west Fergus Falls), Wright (rebuilt 1922 - downtown Fergus Falls), Taplin Gorge (1925 - northeast of Fergus Falls), and Bemidji (built early 1900s / purchased in 1944). Hoot Lake is unique in that the dam also forms the water intake for the coal-fired power plant nearby. Taplin Gorge's powerhouse is unique in that it was modeled after the Mausoleum of Theodoric at Ravenna, Italy.
Coal-fired plants.
After the company's load exceeded the capacity of its dams, the company then switched to coal to meet its energy requirements. A number of plants were added to its system in the 1920s, starting with Hoot Lake in 1921. The most important one was built near Washburn, ND in 1926, as it was one of the earliest large-scale plants to burn lignite exclusively. The company then added several more plants across the system in the late 1940s to meet the huge surge in demand after WWII, but when the company's Big Stone plant was completed in 1974, all of these smaller plants were retired and removed. The company completed its Coyote plant in 1981, after which another of the company's earlier plants (at Ortonville, MN) was removed. The Hoot Lake plant is the last of the company's early plants still in operation, with the two current operating units having been completed in 1959 and 1964 (the earlier units from 1921, 1923, 1937, and 1948 have all long since been retired and dismantled). The company recently submitted a plan to replace the old Hoot Lake plant with a new gas-fired plant by 2021.
Wind power.
Otter Tail Power Company currently owns 138 MW of wind generation, and purchases an additional 45 MW for a total of 183 MW of wind power. By 2010 wind generation on the system was expected to be equivalent to 18 percent of retail sales. Owned wind resources and power purchase agreements for Otter Tail Power Company include: Luverne Wind Farm, Ashtabula Wind Energy Center, Langdon Wind Energy Center, and North Dakota Wind II.


Alberta Electric System Operator

The Alberta Electric System Operator, (AESO), is a not-for-profit entity responsible for the planning and operation of the Alberta Interconnected Electric System (AIES) in a "safe, reliable, and economical" manner. It is mandated by provincial legislation to act in the public interest and cannot own any transmission, distribution or generation assets.
The key duties and responsibilities of the AESO are dictated by the Province of Alberta's "Electric Utilities Act" (EUA) and the "Transmission Regulation" (T-Reg) and include, without limitation, the following:
The AESO operates a market for the exchange of electric energy in Alberta and attempts to uphold the principles of market fairness, openness, and efficiency. To this end the AESO "contracts with transmission facility owners to provide generators access to the electric grid."
One of AESO's responsibilities is to manage system load in the case where shortfalls in supply or excessive demand for electricity threaten the integrity of the power grid. In this case AESO can direct power companies to shed load temporarily through measures such as rolling blackouts. In July 2012, six power generators were shut down during a major heat wave that resulted in high demand on the power grid, Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer and Lethbridge were hit by rolling blackouts. AESO directed utilities to reduce their customer load. AESO's Doug Simpson explained that this had not happened since 2006.
According to their homepage, AESO operates "independently of any industry affiliations and owns no transmission or market assets."
History.
Alberta electricity policy changed in 1996, with the province restructuring its electricity market away from traditional regulation to a market-based system. The market now includes a host of buyers and sellers, and an increasingly diverse infrastructure.
Expanding wind farms.
In 2006 Alberta Electric System Operator explained the limitations of dependence on wind power. AESO at that time could not "rely on any more than 900 megawatts of wind (less than eight per cent of the province's total power generation) because wind doesn't blow consistently. When it drops off, coal and natural gas plants have to take up the slack to avoid power shortages." At that time Alberta didn't have "enough transmission lines to connect new wind turbines to its power grid."
High cost of electricity in Alberta.
In April 2013, Calgary ranked third (with an average monthly payment of $216 based on a monthly consumption of 1,000 kWh) and Edmonton fourth ($202 a month) in Canada compared to other cities in terms of high electricity bills. Halifax placed first and worst in Canada at $225 a month. Compared to other cities in North America, Calgary and Edmonton placed seventh and eighth in terms of highest power costs. Vancouver, BC was among the least expensive($130 a month).
The unit price of electricity in Calgary in April 2013 was 14.81 cents per kWh, compared to 6.87 cents per kWh in Montreal, 15.45 in Halifax.
Keith Provost, former senior vice-president of Alberta Power Ltd. (now ATCO Electric), with decades of experience in the electrical utilities business, argued that instead of marketing electricity contracts for future deliveries in a regulated market, AESO has their own system that is open to manipulation and is not a free-market system. According to AESO, "The pool price is the arithmetic average of the 60 one-minute system marginal prices. Only those offers accepted generate power and receive the AESO pool price. All offers accepted receive the same price, the pool price, not the price offered."