Railway electrification in the Soviet Union

While the former Soviet Union got a late (and slow) start with rail electrification in the 1930s it eventually became the world leader in electrification in terms of the volume of traffic under the wires. During its last 30 years the Soviet Union hauled about as much rail freight as all the other countries in the world combined and in the end, over 60% of this was by electric locomotives. Electrification was cost effective due to the very high density of traffic and was at times projected to yield at least a 10% return on electrification investment (to replace diesel traction). By 1990, the electrification was about half 3 kV DC and half 25 kV AC 50 Hz and 70% of rail passenger-km was by electric railways.
Comparison to the US and others.
Compared to the US, the Soviet Union got off to a very slow start in electrification but later greatly surpassed the US. Electrification in the US reached its maximum of 5,000 km in the late 1930s which is just when electrification was getting its start in the USSR.
About 20 years after the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, China became the new world leader in rail electrification with 48 Mm electrified by 2013, and continuing to grow.
History.
1920s: Lenin supports rail electrification.
Replacing steam traction (on lines with high traffic) by electrification was cost effective and this was the impetus for the first electrifications in the 1930s. The 1920 national electrification plan, GOELRO—ГОЭЛРО included railway electrification and was strongly supported by Lenin, the leader of the Soviet revolution. Lenin wrote a letter implying that if rail electrification was not feasible at the present time, might it not be feasible in 5–10 years from now. And in fact, railway electrification actually got started several years later but Lenin didn't live to see it happen.
In 1926 a 19 km. long section from Baky, electrified at 1200 VDC, was opened for commuter motor-car trains. In 1929, a 18 km. section, electrified at 1500 volts. was opened from Moscow to Mytiski. Future electrifications in the 1930s would be more substantial and mostly at 3000 VDC (3 kV).
1930s.
Some new electrification at 1.5 kV still continued but in the 1930s over three times as much electrification used 3 kV. Mainline railway electrification at 3 kV. in the Soviet Union began in 1932 with the opening of a 3,000 V DC section in Georgia on the Surami Pass between the capital, Tbilisi, and the Black Sea. The grade (slope) was steep: 2.9%. The original fleet of eight electric locomotives was imported from the United States and were made by General Electric (GE). The Soviets obtained construction drawings from GE enabling them to construct locomotives to the same design. The first electric locomotive constructed in the USSR was an indigenous design completed in November 1932. Later in the same month, the second locomotive, a copy of the GE locomotive, was completed. At first, many more copies of US design were made than ones of Soviet design. Then no more locomotives of Soviet design were made until two years later.
The 5-year plans for electrification in the 1930s all came up short. By October 1933, the first 5-year plan called for the electrification in the USSR to reach 456 km vs. 347 km actually achieved. Future 5-year plans were even more under-fulfilled. For the 2nd 5-year plan (through 1937) it was 5062 km planned vs 1632 actual. In the 3rd 5-year plan (thru 1942) it was 3472 vs. 1950 actual but the start of World War II in mid 1941 contributed to this shortfall.
World War II.
By 1941, the USSR had electrified only 1,865 route-kilometres. This was well behind the US, which had nearly 5,000 kilometres electrified. However, since the USSR rail network was much shorter than the US, the percentage of Soviet rail kilometres electrified was greater than the US. During World War II as the western part of the Soviet Union (including parts of Russia) was invaded by Nazi Germany. About 600 km of electrification was dismantled just before invasion but after the Germans were finally driven out, some dismantled electrification was reinstalled. After the war, the highest priority was to rebuild the destruction caused by the war, so major railway electrification was further postponed for about 10 years.
Post-war.
In 1946 the USSR ordered 20 electric locomotives from General Electric, the same US corporation that supplied locomotives for the first Soviet electrification. Due to the cold war, they could not be delivered to the USSR so they were sold elsewhere. The Milwaukee Road and some other railroad companies in the US obtained 12, which were converted to standard gauge. They were nicknamed "Little Joes"; "Joe" referring to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet premier.
In the mid-1950s, the USSR launched a two-pronged approach to replace steam locomotives. They would electrify the lines with high density traffic and slowly convert the others to diesel. The result was a slow but steady introduction of both electric and diesel traction which lasted until about 1975 when their last steam locomotives were retired. In the US, steam went out about 1960, 15 years earlier than for the USSR.
Once dieselisation and electrification had fully replaced steam they began to convert diesel lines to electric, but the pace of electrification slowed. By 1990, over 60% of railway freight was being hauled by electric traction. This amounted to about 30% of the freight hauled by all railways in the world (by all types of locomotives) and about 80% of rail freight in the US (where rail freight held almost a 40% modal share). of intercity freight ton-miles. The USSR was hauling more rail freight than all the other countries in the world combined, and most of this was going by electrified railway.
Post-Soviet era.
After the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, railway traffic in Russia sharply declined and new major electrification projects were not undertaken but work continued on some unfinished projects. The line to Murmansk was completed in 2005. Electrification of the last segment of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok was completed in 2002. By 2008, the tonne-kilometres hauled by electric trains in Russia had increased to about 85% of rail freight.
Energy-efficiency.
Compared to diesels.

Partly due to inefficient generation of electricity in the USSR (only 20.8% thermal efficiency in 1950 vs. 36.2% in 1975), in 1950 diesel traction was about twice as energy efficient as electric traction(in terms of net tonne-km of freight per kg of "standard fuel"). But as efficiency of electricity generation (and thus of electric traction) improved, by about 1965 electric railways became more efficient than diesel. After the mid 1970s electrics used about 25% less fuel per ton-km. However diesels were mainly used on single track lines with a fair amount of traffic where diesel trains waste energy braking to a stop to pass by opposing trains. So the lower fuel consumption of electrics may be in part due to better operating conditions on electrified lines (such as double tracking) rather than inherent energy efficiency. Nevertheless, the cost of diesel fuel was about 1.5 times more (per unit of heat energy content) than that of the fuel used in electric power plants (that generated electricity), thus making electric railways even more energy-cost effective.
Besides increased efficiency of power plants, there was an increase in efficiency (between 1950 and 1973) of the railway utilization of this electricity with energy-intensity dropping from 218 to 124 kwh/10,000 gross tonne-km (of both passenger and freight trains) or a 43% drop. Since energy-intensity is the inverse of energy-efficiency it drops as efficiency goes up. But most of this 43% decrease in energy-intensity also benefited diesel traction. The conversion of wheel bearings from plain to roller, increase of train weight, converting single track lines to double track (or partially double track), and the elimination of obsolete 2-axle freight cars increased the energy-efficiency of all types of traction: electric, diesel, and steam. However, there remained a 12–15% reduction of energy-intensity that only benefited electric traction (and not diesel). This was due to improvements in locomotives, more widespread use of regenerative braking (which in 1989 recycled 2.65% of the electric energy used for traction,) remote control of substations, better handling of the locomotive by the locomotive crew, and improvements in automation. Thus the overall efficiency of electric traction as compared to diesel more than doubled between 1950 and the mid-1970s in the Soviet Union. But after 1974 (thru 1980) there was no improvement in energy-intensity (wh/tonne-km) in part due to increasing speeds of passenger and freight trains.

DC vs. AC.
In 1973 (per the table below), DC traction at 3,000 volts, lost about 3 times as much energy (percentage-wise) in the catenary as AC at 25,000 volts. Paradoxically, it turned out that DC locomotives were somewhat more efficient overall than AC locomotives. "Auxiliary Electric Motors" are mainly used for air cooling electric machinery such as traction motors. Electric locomotives concentrate high power electric machinery in a relatively small space and thus require a lot of cooling. Per the table below, a sizeable amount of energy (11–17%) is used for this, but when operating at nominal power only 2–4% is used. The fact that the cooling motors run at full speed (and power) all the time makes their power consumption constant, so when the locomotive motors are operating at low power (far below the nominal regime) the percent of this power used for cooling blowers becomes much higher. The result is that under actual operating conditions, the percent energy used for cooling is a few times higher than "nominal". Per the table below, AC locomotives used about 50% more energy for this purpose since in addition to cooling the motors, the blowers must cool the transformer, rectifiers and the smoothing reactor (inductors), which are mostly absent on DC locomotives. The 3-phase AC power for these blower motors is supplied from a rotary phase converter which converts single phase (from the catenary via the main transformer) to 3-phase (and this also takes energy). It's proposed to reduce blower speeds when less cooling is needed.
Traction motor and gears efficiency.
While the above table shows that about 75% of the electric energy supplied to the rail substation actually reaches the electric traction motors of the locomotive, the question remains as to how much energy is lost in the traction motor and the simple gear transmission (only two gear wheels). Some in the USSR thought it was about 10% (90% efficient). But counter to this, it was claimed that the actual loss was significantly higher than this since the average power used by locomotive when "in motion" was only roughly 20% of nominal power, with lower efficiency at lower power levels. However, checking Russian books on the subject indicates that the supporters of 90% efficiency may not be too far off the mark.
When calculating average efficiency over a period of time, one needs to take an average of efficiencies weighted by the product of power input and time (of that segment of power input): formula_1 where formula_2 is the power input and formula_3 is the efficiency during time formula_4 If efficiency is low at very low power, then this low efficiency has a low weighting due to the low power (and the low amount of energy thus consumed). Conversely, high efficiencies (presumably at high power) get high weighting and thus count for more. This may result in a higher average efficiency than would be obtained by simply averaging efficiency over time. Another consideration is that the efficiency curves (that plot efficiency vs. current) tend to drop off rapidly at both low current and very high current for traction motor efficiency, and at low power for gear efficiency) so it is not a linear relationship. Investigations for diesel locomotives show that the lower notches (except notch 0 which is "motor off") of the controller (and especially notch 1 – the lowest power) are much less used than the higher notches. At very high currents, the resistive loss is high since it is proportional to the square of the current. While a locomotive may exceed the nominal current, if it goes too high the wheels will start slipping. So the unanswered question is just how often is nominal current exceeded and for how long? The instructions for starting a train from a stop suggest exceeding the current where the wheels would normally start to slip, but to avoid such slipping by putting sand on the rails (either automatically or by depressing a "sand" button just as the wheels start to slip).
Inspecting a graph of traction motor gear efficiency shows 98% efficiency at nominal power but only 94% efficiency at 30% of nominal power. To get the efficiency of the motor and gears (connected in series), the two efficiencies must be multiplied. If the weighted traction motor efficiency is 90%, then 90% x 94% = 85% (very rough estimate) which is not too much lower than that estimated the 90% supporters mentioned above. If per the table 75% of power to the substation reaches the locomotive motors then 75% x 85 = 64% (roughly) of the power to the substation (from the USSR's power grid) reaches the wheels of the locomotives in the form of mechanical energy to pull the trains. This neglects the power used for "housekeeping" (heating, lighting, etc.) on passenger trains. This is over the whole range of operating conditions in the early 1970s. There are a number of ways to significantly improve this 64% figure and it fails to take into account savings due to regeneration (using the traction motors as generators to put power back on the catenary to power other trains).
Economics.
In 1991 (the final year of the Soviet Union) the cost of electrifying one kilometre was 340–470 thousand rubles and required up to 10 tonnes of copper. Thus it was expensive to electrify. Are the savings due to electrification worth the cost? As compared to inefficient steam locomotives, it's easy to make the case for electrification. But how does electrification economically compare with diesels locomotives which started to be introduced in the USSR in the mid 1930s and were significantly less costly than steam traction? Later on there were even whole books written on the topic of comparing the economies of electric vs. diesel traction
Electrification requires high fixed costs but results in savings in operating cost per tonne-km hauled. The more tonne-km, the greater this savings, so that higher traffic will result in savings that more than cover the fixed costs. Steep grades also favor electrification, partly because regenerative braking can recover some energy when descending the grade. Using the formula below to compare diesel to electric on a double track line with Ruling gradient of 0.9 to 1.1% and density of about 20 million t-km/km (or higher) results in less cost for electric with an assumed 10% return required on the capital investment. For lower traffic, diesel traction will be more economical per this methodology.
Return on investment formula.
The decision to electrify is supposed to be based on return on investment and examples are given which proposed electrification only if the investment in electrification would not only pay for itself in lower operating cost but in addition would give a percentage return on the investment. Example percentage returns on investment are 10% and 8%. In comparing two (or more) alternatives (such as electrification or dieselization of a rail line) one calculates the total annual cost, using a certain interest return on capital and then selects the least cost alternative. The formula for total annual cost is: Эпрi=Эi+ЕнКi where the subscript i is the i th alternative (all the other letters except i are in the Russian alphabet), Эi is the annual cost of alternative i (including amortization of capital), Ен is the interest rate, and Кi is the value (price) of the capital investment for alternative i. But none of the references cited here (and elsewhere) call Ен an interest rate. Instead, they describe it as the inverse of the number of years required to have the net benefits of the investment pay off the investment where the net benefits are calculated net of paying amortization "costs" of the investment. Also, different books sometimes use different letters for this formula.
Fuel/power costs.
In the early 1970s, the cost of providing mechanical energy to move trains (locomotive operating costs) amounted to 40–43% of the total operating cost of the railways. This includes the cost of fuel/electric-power, operating/maintaining locomotives (including crew wages), maintaining the electric power system (for electrified lines), and depreciation. Of the cost of providing this mechanical energy (locomotive operating costs), fuel and power costs amounted to 40–45%. Thus fuel/power costs are very significant cost components and electric traction generally uses less energy (see #Energy-efficiency).
One may plot fuel cost per year as a function of traffic flow (in net tonnes/year in one direction) for various assumptions (of ruling grades, locomotive model, single or double track, and fuel/power prices), resulting· in a large number of such plotted curves. For early 1970s energy prices of 1.3 kopecks/kwh and 70 roubles/tonne for diesel fuel, these curves (or tables based on them) show the fuel/power costs to be very roughly 1.5 to 2 time higher for diesel operation as for electric. The exact ratio, of course, depends on the various assumptions and in extreme cases of low diesel fuel prices (45 roubles/tonne) and high electricity cost (1.5 kopecks/kwh), diesel fuel costs of rail movement are lower than electricity costs. All of these curves show the difference in energy cost (of diesel vs. electric) increases with traffic flow. One may approximate the above-mentioned curves by cubic functions of the traffic flow (in net tonnes/year) with the coefficients being linear functions of fuel/power prices. In mathematics, such coefficients are usually shown as constants, but here they are also mathematical functions Such use of mathematical formulas facilitates computerized evaluation of alternatives.
Non-fuel/power costs.
In a sense, these are components of the costs of mechanical energy delivered to the wheels of the locomotive but they are neither liquid fuel nor electricity. While electric traction usually saves on fuel/power costs, what about the other cost comparisons? Of the costs of locomotive operation, the maintenance and repair costs for electric locomotives amounted to about 6% as compared to 11% for diesel locomotives. Besides lower maintenance/repair costs it's claimed that the labor (crew) cost of operating electric locomotives is a little lower for electrics. Lubrication costs is less for electrics (they have no diesel engines to fill with lubricating oil).
Countering the cost advantages of electric traction are the cost disadvantages of electrification: primarily the costs of the catenary and substations (including maintenance costs). It turns out that roughly half of the yearly cost is for depreciation to pay back the original cost of the installation and the other half is for maintenance. An important factor was the use of the railway electric power system in the Soviet Union to supply public power to residences, farms, and non-rail industry which in the early 1970s consisted of about 65% of the electric energy used by trains. Thus the sharing of costs of electrification with external electricity consumers reduces the cost of rail electrification resulting in reduced yearly electrification costs of 15–30%. It's claimed that this cost sharing significantly unfairly favored the external users of electricity at the expense of the railway. However (in the early 1970s) it's claimed that the annual cost of rail electrification (including maintenance) was only a third to a half of the benefits of savings in fuel costs thus favoring electric traction (if the interest cost of capital is neglected and the traffic is fairly high).
Historical costs of locomotive operation: Electric vs. Diesel.
The following table shows these costs for both 1960 and 1974 in roubles per 100,000 tonne-km gross haulage of freight. These costs include capital cost by the use of depreciation charges (in a non-inflation environment).
Note that "depreciation" for electric traction includes maintenance and depreciation charges for the catenary and electric substations. For both types of traction, depreciation of the repair shops are included. For diesel traction there is depreciation of fueling facilities. The higher depreciation of the diesel locomotive is more than made up for by the depreciation of the catenary and substations for the case of electric traction.
In 1960 electric and diesel were about equal in cost but in 1974, after a significant increase in the price of diesel fuel due to the 1973 oil crisis, electric traction became lower in cost. Note that there are no interest charges added to depreciation.
Total yearly cost comparison.
Per the calculations by Dmytriev Even a low traffic-density line with 5 million tonne-km/km (in both directions) will pay back the cost of electrification if the interest rate is zero (Ен=0) (no return on investment). As traffic density increases, the ratio of diesel to electric yearly expenses (including depreciation) increases. In an extreme case (traffic density 60 million tonne-km/km, and 1.1% ruling grade), diesel operating costs (including depreciation) are 75% higher than electric. Thus it really pays to electrify lines with high density traffic.
Electrical systems.
Voltage and Current.
The USSR originally started at 1500 V DC (later converted to 3000 V in the 1960s) in the early 1930s selected 3,000 V DC for mainline electrification. Even then, it was realized that this 3kV voltage was too low for the catenary but too high to be optimal for traction motors. The solution to the problem was to use 25 kV AC for the catenary and provide on-board transformers to step down the 25 kV to a much lower voltage, after which it was rectified to provide a lower voltage DC. But it wasn't until the late 1950s that AC electrification became significant.
Another proposal was to use 6kV dc\ and reduce the high voltage DC with power electronics before it was applied to the traction motors. Only one experimental train set using 6 kV was made and it only operated in the 1970s but was discontinued due to the low quality of its electrical equipment. In the final years of the Soviet Union, a debate was in progress as to whether the 3,000 V DC system should be converted to the standard 25 kV system or to a 12 kV DC system. 12 kV DC was claimed to have the same technical and economic advantages as 25 kV AC, while costing less and putting a balanced load on the nation's AC power grid (there is no reactive power problem to deal with). Opponents pointed out that such a move would create a third standard electrification system in the USSR. One proposal using 12 kV was to create a new locomotive that could operate under both 3kV and 12kV wires. It would convert 12kV to 3KV using power electronics and then use the 3kV (obtained directly if under a 3 kV wire) to power induction motors also using power electronics to drive them.
Examples of electric locomotives.
Site with 34 articles on 34 Soviet electric locomotives
Bibliography.
Westwood J.N. "Transport" chapter in book "The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945" ed. by Davies, R.W. et al., Cambridge University Press, 1994.


Kumargaon Power Plant

Sylhet power plant popularly known as Kumargaon Power Plant () also known as Kumargaon Power Station is a gas turbine power station in Sylhet Sadar Upazila, Sylhet District of Bangladesh. This plant is operated by Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). It has connected Sylhet district and some parts of Moulvibazar, Sunamganj, and Habiganj.
Structure.
Kumargaon Power Plant is located at Akhalia, Kumargaon. It is a 132/33 KV transmission grid substation with two transmission line. One is 225MW, while the other is 20MW.
History.
Kumargaon substation was built in 1967 with a capacity of 13 MW. The Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources of Bangladesh planned to upgrade 150MW Sylhet Gas turbine power plant to 225MW Combined cycle power plant to generate more power using less gas. For this purpose, Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) has signed a deal with Shanghai Electric Group in 2009. PGCB has four 132/33 KV transformers at Kumargaon substation. Bangladesh Power Development Board also has two 33/11 KV transformers to supply electricity to the city.


Huadian Energy

Huadian Energy Company Limited is an electric power company based in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. The significant shareholder of the listed company is the state-owned China Huadian.
Huadian Energy Company Limited was one of the first joint-stock pilot projects of the Heilongjiang Province government with the former State Ministry of Power Industry. The company was formed 2 February 1993. In 1996 A shares and B shares were listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The main businesses are power generation, heating, green energy and power equipment manufacturing.
As of the end of 2008 the company had 16.8 billion RMB total assets. Total installed capacity of 3.4 GW with 4.2 GW in construction. The company is also developing wind power projects and sludge incineration.


Electricity sector in Taiwan

The electricity sector in Taiwan ranges from generation, transmission, distribution and sales of electricity, covering Taiwan island and its offshore islands.
Regulator.
Electricity sector in Taiwan is regulated by its state-owned electric power utility company Taiwan Power Company (Taipower), established on 1 May 1946.
Independent power producers.
After the liberalization of Taiwan electricity market in January 1995, there are total of 9 independent power producers in Taiwan up to date, which are:
Generation.
Installed capacity.
At the end of 2016, the total installed capacity of electricity in Taiwan was 49.06 GW, which came from coal-based thermal (34.73%), gas-based thermal (32.32%), nuclear (10.49%), renewable energy (9.10%), fuel-based thermal (8.06%) and pumped storage hydro (5.3%).
Power generation.
Total power generation in 2017 was 270,279 GWh – which was supplied from coal (46.6%), natural gas (34.6%), nuclear (8.3%), renewables (4.6%), oil (4.7%), and pumped-storage hydro (1.2%).
In 2012, Taipower purchased electricity from nine Independent Power Producers with a total capacity of 7,652.1 MW. Taiwan has seen an annual growth of 4.4% in terms of electricity generation in 1992–2012.
In terms of price to produce electricity, the average generation cost of electricity in Taiwan was US$7.0 cent/kWh, which consists of US$1.9 cent/kWh for nuclear, US$5.8 cent/kWh for coal and US$11.25 cent/kWh for natural gas.
Taipower operates three types of power plant based on the generation characteristics, which are peaking power plant, load following power plant and base load power plant.
In 2012, the base load power source constituted for 42.4% of the total power generation in Taiwan, below the expected level of 55-65%. Over the past decade, the capacity of peak load energy sources was between 10.3 and 14.8%, slightly lower than the expected 10-15% value.
Power plants.
As of 2007, Taiwan had a total of 78 power plants, which are 39 hydro power plants, 27 thermal power plants, 9 wind farms and 3 nuclear power plants.
World records.
Taiwan is home to Taichung Power Plant, the world second largest coal-fired power plant with a 5,500 MW installed capacity, with additional 324 MW from its gas turbine and wind power generated electricity. The power plant is located in Longjing District, Taichung. The plant is also the largest power plant in Taiwan.
The Tatan Power Plant in Guanyin, Taoyuan is the world's largest gas turbine combined cycle power plant at the capacity of 4,419 MW.
Efficiency.
In 2013, for steam turbine-based power plants, the plants have 31.89% for oil-fired plants, 35.71% for coal-fired plants and 30.93% for gas-fired plants of efficiency. The power plants also have efficiency of 37.17% for diesel engine plants, 25.08% for gas turbine plants and 44.78% for combined cycle plants.
Reserved margin.
Taiwan set the reserve margin between power availability and power demand to be 6% minimum. Any value below that number would trigger an alert. Once the reserve margin falls below the 900 MW alert level, power rationing will be put into place.
In 2014, the reserved margin of electricity in Taiwan was 14.7%, in 2015 it felt to 10.4%. On 19 October 2016, it felt to 2.38% which is below the 900 MW threshold value, triggering the warning.
Transmission and distribution.
Transmission and distribution lines.
As of end of 2013, Taiwan owned a total of 17,054 km length of transmission line with the voltage levels of the transmission system are 345 kV and 161 kV. All of the transmission lines are fully owned by Taipower. The total length of the distribution line is 351,474 km and it goes up deep as the 4th level for underground distribution.
Currently, Taipower is implementing the 6-year 7th Power Transmission and Substation Project starting January 2010 until December 2015 with a total investment of NT$238.9 billion. The project will completed a new and expanded section of transmission lines running 2,370 km, a group of 130 substations and an expanded main transformer capacity of 23,560 MVA.
Substations and distribution system.
As of end of 2013, there were 598 substations within Taiwan's electrical grid, which consist of 29 EHV substations, 275 primary substations and 294 secondary substations with a capacity of 58,500 MVA, 71,480 MVA and 22,127 MVA respectively. Around 70% of its distribution system has been fully automated.
Smart grid.
Taipower allocated US$800 million worth of investment for the development of distribution automation and smart substations. In 2007, Taipower completed a smart grid roadmap for the future 20 years. It contains three phases, which are short term, medium term and long term. It also targets four areas, namely power grid safety and reliability, energy efficiency, customer service quality and integration of distributed power sources.
Losses.
In 2013, Taiwan's line losses accounted for 7,290.9 GWh or 2.96% of total domestic consumption.
Load.
Rating.
At the customers end, electricity in Taiwan uses 110 V and 60 Hz.
Peak load.
The peak load in Taiwan's electrical grid was 33,957 MW in 2013 and 34,820 MW in 2014. It is predicted that the peak load will reach 43,010 MW in 2026. On 2 July 2015 at 1:48 p.m. local time, electricity load instantaneously reached its highest peak ever in Taiwan history at 35,380 MW. On 6 July 2015, the peak load record was broken when electricity consumption reached 35,560 MW at 1:45 p.m. local time, putting the reserve margin to an alarming level at 3.07%.
Electricity consumption.
In 2013, the total annual electricity consumption in Taiwan was 202 TWh, ranging from industrial (55.5%), residential (20.2%), commercial (15.6%) and others (8.7%). The per capita electricity consumption in 2012 was 10,424 kWh. As of 2015, the growth of electricity consumption is projected to grow by 1.9% annually. Northern Taiwan consumes 40% of the total power generated in Taiwan, and it relies on Central Taiwan and Southern Taiwan for additional power source.
Customers.
In 2012, there were a total of almost 13 millions of electricity customers in Taiwan, ranging from residential (89.4%), commercials (7.6%), industrial (1.6%) and others (1.4%).
Electricity metering.
Taiwan implements the usage of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) as one of the demand side management strategy to cut down energy consumption and upgrade energy usage efficiency with a total investment of US$2.74 billion. The Bureau of Energy of the Ministry of Economic Affairs instructed Taipower to do AMI installations to 23,600 high voltage customers and 10,000 low voltage customers in 2012. As of the end of 2011, Taipower has completed the 1,200 AMI installations for 1,200 high voltage customers.
Electricity saving.
To encourage the public for energy and electricity saving, Taipower continued to launch the "Power-Saving Initiative Measures" and "Energy Conservation Competitions" to encourage the public to save electricity. After the measures were taken in 2012, a total amount of 4.833 TWh of electricity was saved in that year with carbon dioxide reduction reaching 2.59 million tons.
In October 2016, due to the reduced reserve capacity of Taipower because of the continuing hot weather, the Executive Yuan ordered government offices around Taiwan to do power saving between 12.00 and 02.00 p.m., especially air conditioners and lights.
Electricity rationing.
Taipower listed five color scales to indicate the level of electricity reserve during a day. "Green" color indicates reserve margin of more than 10% of total power generation, "yellow" indicates margin between 6-10%, "orange" indicates margin below 6%, "red" indicates margin of less than 900 MW and "black" indicates margin of less than 500 MW thus Taipower shall initiate electricity rationing. Since 1988, Taiwan has experienced 57 rationing with the latest one happened in 2002.
In the event of the execution of power rationing, Taipower would first reduce the power supply by 5% to business customers with loads more than 5 MW, followed by 5% reduction to those use between 1-5 MW if problem persists. Rationing would be increased to 10-15% if the reserve continues to drop. If problem still continues, rationing would be imposed to business and households with loads less than 1 MW.
Electricity tariff.
For the customers end, the current tariff of electricity before tax in 2013 is NT$3.1165/kWh for lighting and NT$2.8020/kWh for power. Summer electricity rates is imposed to customers during summer seasons between June and September every year for usage more than 400 kWh per month.
Blackout.
The most number of power outage in Taiwan due to storm occurred on 9 August 2015 when Typhoon Soudelor hit the island, leaving 4.85 million households without electricity.
On 15 August 2017 at 4:52 p.m., six generators of Tatan Power Plant in Guanyin District, Taoyuan City fully tripped due to operation technical error, disrupting the supply of 4 GW of electricity. The outage hit northern half of Taiwan Island, affecting 6.68 million households.
Efficiency.
In 2015, Taiwan ranked 2nd worldwide among 189 for providing electricity to users in an efficient manner in the category of "Getting Electricity" in the Doing Business 2016 rankings released by the World Bank.
Security.
On 17 September 2019, Taipower signed an agreement with Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice on digital security of their operating system.
Tourism.
Tourism-purpose electrical-related objects in Taiwan are:


Seraya Energy

Seraya Energy is a licensed electricity retailer serving the Singaporean electricity market. It is a subsidiary of YTL PowerSeraya Pte. Limited, one of the largest power generation companies in Singapore.
The company serves customers in a wide range of sectors including manufacturing, government, education, retail, and food and beverage. It also offers bundled utilities like steam and industrial water, and has introduced value-added services for its energy customers.
Seraya Energy is one of the leading electricity retailers in terms of market share serving the Singaporean electricity market.


KT66

KT66 is the designator for a beam tetrode vacuum tube introduced by Marconi-Osram Valve Co. Ltd. (M-OV) of Britain in 1937.
Overview.
The KT66 is the direct descendant of the "Harries Valve" developed by British engineer J. Owen Harries and marketed by the Hivac Co. Ltd. in 1935. Harries is believed to be the first engineer to discover the "critical distance" effect, which maximized the efficiency of a power tetrode by positioning its anode at a distance which is a specific multiple of the screen grid-cathode distance. This design also minimized interference of secondary emission electrons dislodged from the anode.
EMI engineers Cabot Bull and Sidney Rodda improved the Harries design with a pair of beam plates, connected to the cathode, which directed the electron streams into two narrow areas, which caused the electron beams to act like a virtual suppressor grid to deflect some secondary electrons back to the anode. The beam tetrode design was also undertaken to avoid the patents which the giant Philips firm held on power pentodes in Europe. Because this overall design eliminated the "tetrode kink" in the lower parts of the tetrode's voltage-current characteristic curves (which sometimes caused tetrode amplifiers to become unstable), M-OV marketed this tube family as the "KT" series, standing for "kinkless tetrode".
A number of different KT tubes were later marketed by M-OV. Some, but not all, were versions of existing American beam tetrode tubes or European power pentodes, such as the KT66 (6L6 similar), KT77 (EL34 and 6CA7 similar), KT88 (6550), and KT63 (6F6, pentode but almost identical characteristics).
Although the RCA 6L6 of 1936 (the result of a license agreement between RCA and M-OV) was the first true "beam power tube" on the market, the later KT66 became almost equally famous, at least in Europe. The two tubes were nearly interchangeable, except that the KT66 was somewhat more rugged than the early metal 6L6.
The KT66 was very popular in European radios and audio amplifiers. It was the standard output tube in the classic Quad II (1952, a version of which is still being manufactured today) and in the LEAK Type 15 (1945) and TL/12 (1948), both among the earliest British hi-fi amplifiers. Because of their excellent electrical characteristics and overload tolerance, KT66s are preferred by some guitar players for use in guitar amps in place of 6L6GC. However, the plate dissipation of the 6L6GC, at 30W, exceeds the KT66's 25W, and adjustment of the amplifier's bias is necessary.
M-OV ceased glass vacuum tube manufacturing in 1988; their old audio tube types became valuable collectibles. In 2004 original M-OV KT66 tubes (bearing the official "Genalex" marketing brand that M-OV used outside the UK), unused in original carton, sold for US$250. KT66 tubes continued to be manufactured at Reflektor Saratov in Russia, JJ Electronic in Slovakia, and at Liuzhou in China.
Some modern Russian manufacture Sovtek KT66 tubes are actually 6L6GC tubes in a KT66 style bottle. While these tubes have the same pinout and minimum tolerances required of a KT66 tube, they do not have the performance characteristics of a true kinkless tetrode KT66 tube.
By contrast the very latest Russian manufactured tubes (2012) not only carry the same internal electrode structure as the original KT66 (they now look the same) they also have the same rugged electrical characteristics and can withstand a high voltage on grid 2 comparable to the anode voltage rating, allowing greater power output afforded by higher voltage capability when run in ultralinear connection.


Tuas Power

Tuas Power Ltd is one of the largest power generation companies and a key provider of energy solutions, multi-utilities and environmental services in Singapore.
In March 2008, the company was acquired by SinoSing Power Pte. Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of energy conglomerate China Huaneng Group(CHNG), from Temasek Holdings for S$4.235 billion. Following the transfer of 100% equity interest in SinoSing Power from CHNG to Huaneng Power International, Inc. (HPI), Tuas Power became a fully owned subsidiary of HPI in July 2008.
Business.
Tuas Power's core business lies in the generation, retailing and trading of electricity. It operates a 2670MW power station, which is located in the Tuas industrial area of Singapore, through its wholly owned subsidiary Tuas Power Generation Pte Ltd. The power station, which houses four 367.5MW Combined Cycle Plants and two 600MW steam plants, contributes about 25 per cent of Singapore’s total power supply. Electricity is sold to commercial customers through Tuas Power's retail arm, Tuas Power Supply Pte Ltd.
The company has also expanded its businesses into related fields such as the provision of multi-utility services and oil terminalling and storage services. Presently, it is building a S$2 billion multi-utility complex, which comprises a Biomass-Clean Coal cogeneration plant, a desalination plant, a wastewater treatment plant and other supporting facilities, in the Tembusu area of Jurong Island.


Micropup

In electronics, a micropup is a style of triode vacuum tube (valve) developed during World War II for use at very high frequencies such as those used in radar. They are characterized by an external anode block, which allows better heat dissipation. These tubes could deliver radio frequency power on the order of kilowatts at wavelengths as short as 25 cm, and on the order of 100 kW at 200 MHz in pulses. Micropup tubes used very high voltages to minimize the transit time of electrons between anode and cathode.
The micropup vacuum tube was made possible by the development of vacuum-tight joining of copper to glass, around 1939. The designs used a cylindrical anode and a concentric cylindrical grid electrode; the cathode was directly heated thoriated tungsten wires, which after the first types were all oxide coated to improve electron emission. One type, the NT99 developed by GEC could produce up to 200 kW peak output (for a pair of tubes) when used in 600 MHz radar sets. A 50 cm radar set using micropup triodes was used by HMS Suffolk to track movements of the Bismarck.
Although widely used in "metre-band" radar systems, the cavity magnetron was able to produce significant power at much higher frequencies, as radar systems developed during the war.


GenOn Energy

GenOn Energy, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, United States, was an energy company that provided electricity to wholesale customers in the United States. The company was one of the largest independent power producers in the nation with more than 14,000 megawatts of power generation capacity across the United States using natural gas, fuel oil and coal. GenOn Energy is headquartered in the Reliant Energy Plaza in Downtown Houston. The company, formerly known as RRI Energy, acquired Mirant on December 3, 2010. The corporate names and logos of both RRI Energy and Mirant were retired.
NRG Energy completed its acquisition of GenOn Energy in December 2012 for $1.7 billion. GenOn's stock ceased trading and was exchanged for NRG stock.
History.
The company was originally known as Houston Industries (), and Houston Lighting & Power was its subsidiary. In August 1996 HI closed on a merger with NorAm Energy Corp, a natural gas utility. The combined company, as of 1997, had assets of $18 billion and annual revenues of about $9 billion. By November 1997 there was a published report stating that the company wished to acquire Central & South West Corp. HI declined to comment.
In 1999, Houston Industries changed its name to Reliant Energy and its new NYSE symbol was REI. It was scheduled to begin trading under REI on February 8, 1999.
In 2002, Texas deregulated the electricity market and Reliant then competed against other energy companies like Direct Energy and TXU Energy. At this time, Reliant Energy also separated into two publicly traded companies: Reliant Resources, Inc. and CenterPoint Energy, Inc. ().
When the state of Texas deregulated the electricity market, the former HL&P was split into several companies. In 2003 HL&P was split into Reliant Energy, Texas Genco, and CenterPoint Energy.
CenterPoint Energy was created when Reliant Energy merged with an indirect subsidiary of CenterPoint Energy, Inc. As a result of the merger, Reliant Energy shareholders received one share of CenterPoint common stock in exchange for each share of RRI common stock they held before the merger. A regulated utility, CenterPoint Energy became one of the largest U.S. energy delivery companies, serving 4.7 million metered customers. In late 2002, CenterPoint distributed the stock of Reliant Resources, Inc. to CenterPoint shareholders. This spin-off created Reliant Resources with a strategy to provide competitive wholesale and retail energy service under the Reliant Energy brand. Its businesses included power generation and retail energy services in Texas newly deregulated electricity market. On the wholesale side, Reliant owned, had an interest in, or leased 37 operating power generation facilities serving five regions of the United States.
In January 2007, the Texas electricity market became fully deregulated, and Reliant began to offer an array of products, flexible service options, and pricing arrangements to a variety of customers. At this time, Reliant was the second largest mass market electricity provider in the state of Texas, with an annual revenue of $10.9 billion and more than 3,500 employees. In February 2007, Reliant Energy announced plans for Mark Jacobs, current chief financial operator, to succeed Joel Staff as chief executive officer and for Brian Landrum to become chief operating officer.
On May 1, 2009, Reliant Energy's retail electricity business was purchased by NRG Energy. The retail group retained the name Reliant Energy and the surviving wholesale business was renamed RRI Energy, Inc.
On June 15, 2017, unable to meet debt obligations, GenOn Energy and GenOn Americas Generation file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Merger to create GenOn Energy.
On April 11, 2010, RRI Energy and Atlanta-based Mirant Corp. announced an agreement to merge in a $1.6 billion all-stock deal, which created one of the largest independent power plant operators in the country. The new company, named GenOn Energy, would be based in Houston but led by Mirant's Chairman and CEO Edward Muller until 2013. At that time, Muller would retire and Mark Jacobs, the president and COO of RRI Energy, would become CEO of GenOn. The new company had a market capitalization of about $3 billion, owning or operating 47 plants in 12 states capable of generating more than 24,650 megawatts of power. The merger was completed on December 3, 2010.
California energy crisis.
In March 2004, a grand jury returned a six-count indictment against Reliant Energy Services, Inc. and four of its officers—Jackie Thomas, a former vice president of Reliant's Power Trading Division; Reggie Howard, a former director of Reliant's West Power Trading Division; Lisa Flowers, a term trader for Reliant's West Power Trading Division; and Kevin Frankeny, Reliant's manager of western operations—for their alleged role in the California electricity crisis. All of the defendants are residents of Texas.
The defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and commodities manipulation and wire fraud, as well as manipulation and attempted manipulation of the price of a commodity in interstate commerce. The indictments were filed on April 8, 2004. On August 15, 2005, Reliant announced that it had reached a $445 million settlement with the states of California, Oregon and Washington, resolving civil litigation claims against the company related to the sale of electricity in the California electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001. In March 2007, Reliant agreed to pay a $22.2 million penalty in addition to a $13.8 million credit provided in a previous settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Environmental record.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have identified Reliant Energy as the 36th-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with roughly 34 million pounds of toxic chemicals released into the air every year. Major pollutants indicated by the study include [[sulfuric acid|sulfuric]] and [[hydrochloric acid]] as well as [[manganese]], [[chromium]], and [[nickel]] compounds.
In December 2007, the US state of New Jersey sued Reliant Energy, claiming that emissions from a Pennsylvania coal-fired power plant hurt the state's air quality. New Jersey claims emissions of smog and acid rain components sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from Reliant's Portland Generating Station in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, drift into its territory. The lawsuit also claims that Reliant violated the federal [[Clean Air Act (United States)|Clean Air Act]] by modifying and operating the plant without required pollution control equipment and construction permits. In February 2012, in response to an EPA ruling, GenOn Energy announced they would be shutting down the Portland Generating Station in 2015.
Reliant Energy claims to have made efforts toward more environmentally safe practices through the use of renewable resources such as [[solar energy]], [[wind power]], [[landfill gas]], and [[coal refuse]].
External links.
[[Category:Electric power companies of the United States]]
[[Category:Companies based in Houston]]
[[Category:American companies established in 2001]]
[[Category:Energy companies established in 2001]]
[[Category:2001 establishments in Texas]]
[[Category:Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange]]


Holomorphic Embedding Load-flow method

The Holomorphic Embedding Load-flow Method (HELM) is a solution method for the power-flow equations of electrical power systems. Its main features are that it is direct (that is, non-iterative) and that it mathematically guarantees a consistent selection of the correct operative branch of the multivalued problem, also signalling the condition of voltage collapse when there is no solution. These properties are relevant not only for the reliability of existing off-line and real-time applications, but also because they enable new types of analytical tools that would be impossible to build with existing iterative load-flow methods (due to their convergence problems). An example of this would be decision-support tools providing validated action plans in real time.
The HELM load-flow algorithm was invented by Antonio Trias and has been granted two US Patents.
A detailed description was presented at the 2012 IEEE PES General Meeting and subsequently published.
The method is founded on advanced concepts and results from complex analysis, such as holomorphicity, the theory of algebraic curves, and analytic continuation. However, the numerical implementation is rather straightforward as it uses standard linear algebra and the Padé approximation. Additionally, since the limiting part of the computation is the factorization of the admittance matrix and this is done only once, its performance is competitive with established fast-decoupled loadflows. The method is currently implemented into industrial-strength real-time and off-line packaged EMS applications.
Background.
The load-flow calculation is one of the most fundamental components in the analysis of power systems and is the cornerstone for almost all other tools used in power system simulation and management. The load-flow equations can be written in the following general form:
where the given (complex) parameters are the admittance matrix
, the bus shunt admittances
, and the bus power
injections representing
constant-power loads and generators.
To solve this non-linear system of algebraic equations, traditional load-flow algorithms were developed based on three iterative techniques: the Gauss–Seidel method,
which has poor convergence properties but very little memory requirements and is straightforward to implement; the full Newton–Raphson method
which has fast (quadratic) iterative convergence properties, but it is computationally costly; and the Fast Decoupled Load-Flow (FDLF) method,
which is based on Newton–Raphson, but greatly reduces its computational cost by means of a decoupling approximation that is valid in most transmission networks. Many other incremental improvements exist; however, the underlying technique in all of them is still an iterative solver, either of Gauss-Seidel or of Newton type. There are two fundamental problems with all iterative schemes of this type. On the one hand, there is no guarantee that the iteration will always converge to a solution; on the other, since the system has multiple solutions, it is not possible to control which solution will be selected. As the power system approaches the point of voltage collapse, spurious solutions get closer to the correct one, and the iterative scheme may be easily attracted to one of them because of the phenomenon of Newton fractals: when the Newton method is applied to complex functions, the basins of attraction for the various solutions show fractal behavior. As a result, no matter how close the chosen initial point of the iterations (seed) is to the correct solution, there is always some non-zero chance of straying off to a different solution. These fundamental problems of iterative loadflows have been extensively documented. A simple illustration for the two-bus model is provided in Although there exist homotopic continuation techniques that alleviate the problem to some degree, the fractal nature of the basins of attraction precludes a 100% reliable method for all electrical scenarios.
The key differential advantage of the HELM is that it is fully deterministic and unambiguous: it guarantees that the solution always
corresponds to the correct operative solution, when it exists; and it signals the non-existence of the solution when the conditions are such that there is no solution (voltage collapse). Additionally, the method is competitive with the FDNR method in terms of computational cost. It brings a solid mathematical treatment of the load-flow problem that provides new insights not previously available with the iterative numerical methods.
Methodology and applications.
HELM is grounded on a rigorous mathematical theory, and in practical terms it could be summarized as follows:
HELM provides a solution to a long-standing problem of all iterative load-flow methods, namely the unreliability of the iterations in finding the correct solution (or any solution at all).
This makes HELM particularly suited for real-time applications, and mandatory for any EMS software based on exploratory algorithms, such as contingency analysis, and under alert and emergency conditions solving operational limits violations and restoration providing guidance through action plans.
Holomorphic embedding.
For the purposes of the discussion, we will omit the treatment of controls, but the method can accommodate all types of controls. For the constraint equations imposed by these controls, an appropriate holomorphic embedding must be also defined.
The method uses an embedding technique by means of a complex parameter .
The first key ingredient in the method lies in requiring the embedding to be holomorphic, that is, that the system of equations for voltages is turned into a system of equations for functions in such a way that the new system defines as holomorphic functions (i.e. complex analytic) of the new complex variable . The aim is to be able to use the process of analytic continuation which will allow the calculation of at . Looking at equations (), a necessary condition for the embedding to be holomorphic is that is replaced under the embedding with , not . This is because complex conjugation itself is not a holomorphic function. On the other hand, it is easy to see that the replacement does allow the equations to define a holomorphic function . However, for a given arbitrary embedding, it remains to be proven that is indeed holomorphic. Taking into account all these considerations, an embedding of this type is proposed:
With this choice, at the right hand side terms become zero, (provided that the denominator is not zero), this corresponds to the case where all the injections are zero and this case has a well known and simple operational solution: all voltages are equal and all flow intensities are zero. Therefore, this choice for the embedding provides at s=0 a well known operational solution.
Now using classical techniques for variable elimination in polynomial systems (results from the theory of Resultants and Gröbner basis it can be proven that equations () do in fact define as holomorphic functions. More significantly, they define as algebraic curves. It is this specific fact, which becomes true because the embedding is holomorphic that guarantees the uniqueness of the result. The solution at determines uniquely the solution everywhere (except on a finite number of branch cuts), thus getting rid of the multi-valuedness of the load-flow problem.
The technique to obtain the coefficients for the power series expansion (on ) of voltages is quite straightforward, once one realizes that equations () can be used to obtain them order after order. Consider the power series expansion for formula_1 and formula_2. By substitution into equations () and identifying terms at each order in , one obtains:
It is then straightforward to solve the sequence of linear systems () successively order after order, starting from . Note that the coefficients of the expansions for and are related by the simple convolution formulas derived from the following identity:
so that the right-hand side in () can always be calculated from the solution of the system at the previous order. Note also how the procedure works by solving just linear systems, in which the matrix remains constant.
A more detailed discussion about this procedure is offered in Ref.
Analytic continuation.
Once the power series at are calculated to the desired order, the problem of calculating them at becomes one of analytic continuation. It should be strongly remarked that this does not have anything in common with the techniques of homotopic continuation. Homotopy is powerful since it only makes use of the concept of continuity and thus it is applicable to general smooth nonlinear systems, but on the other hand it does not always provide a reliable method to approximate the functions (as it relies on iterative schemes such as Newton-Raphson).
It can be proven that algebraic curves are complete global analytic functions, that is, knowledge of the power series expansion at one point (the so-called germ of the function) uniquely determines the function everywhere on the complex plane, except on a finite number of branch cuts. Stahl's extremal domain theorem further asserts that there exists a maximal domain for the analytic continuation of the function, which corresponds to the choice of branch cuts with minimal measure. In the case of algebraic curves the number of cuts is finite, therefore it would be feasible to find maximal continuations by finding the combination of cuts with minimal capacity. For further improvements, Stahl's theorem on the convergence of Padé Approximants states that the diagonal and supra-diagonal Padé (or equivalently, the continued fraction approximants to the power series) converge to the maximal analytic continuation. The zeros and poles of the approximants remarkably accumulate on the set of branch cuts having minimal capacity.
These properties confer the load-flow method with the ability to unequivocally detect the condition of voltage collapse: the algebraic approximations are guaranteed to either converge to the solution if it exists, or not converge if the solution does not exist.


Hydroelectric power in the United States

Hydroelectric power in the United States is, as of 2019, the second-largest renewable source of energy in both generation and nominal capacity (behind wind power). In 2019, hydroelectric power produced 38% of the total renewable electricity, and 6.6% of the total U.S. electricity.
According to the International Hydropower Association, the United States was the 3rd largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world in 2020 after Brazil and China. Total installed capacity for 2020 was 102,8 GW. The installed capacity was 80 GW in 2015. The amount of hydroelectric power generated is strongly affected by changes in precipitation and surface runoff.
Hydroelectric stations exist in at least 34 US states. The largest concentration of hydroelectric generation in the US is in the Columbia River basin, which in 2012 was the source of 44% of the nation's hydroelectricity. Hydroelectricity projects such as Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and the Tennessee Valley Authority have become iconic large construction projects.
Of note, however, is that California does not consider power generated from large hydroelectric facilities (facilities greater than 30 megawatts) to meet its strictest definition of "renewable", due to concerns over the environmental impact of large hydroelectric projects. As such, electricity generated from large hydroelectric facilities does not count toward California's strict Renewable Portfolio Standards. Roughly about 10 to 15 percent of California's energy generation is from large hydroelectric generation that is not RPS-eligible.
The significant impact of dams on the power sector, water use, river flow, and environmental concerns requires significant policy specific to hydropower.
History.
The earliest hydroelectric power generation in the U.S. was utilized for lighting and employed the better understood direct current (DC) system to provide the electrical flow. It did not flow far however, with ten miles being the system's limit; solving electricity's transmission problems would come later and be the greatest incentive to the new hydroelectric water-power developments.
The first DC powerhouse was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the water turbine at the Wolverine Chair factory was attached to a dynamo using a mechanical belt drive to illuminate sixteen street lights. This occurred in 1880, the same year Thomas Edison produced the long-lasting incandescent filament light bulb, which was a safety and convenience improvement over existing candles, whale oil lamps and kerosene lamps inside buildings. In 1881, also using DC for lighting at Niagara Falls, Jacob F. Schoellkopf diverted part of the output from his waterwheel-powered flour mills to drive one of Charles Brush's improved generators to provide nighttime illumination for the tourists. Previously the attraction had been illuminated by burning bright calcium flares but arc-lights proved a better and cheaper alternative. In 1882, the world's first commercial central DC hydroelectric power plant provided power for a paper mill in Appleton, Wisconsin; just months later the first investor-owned electric utility, Edison Illuminating Company, completed the first fossil fueled electrical power plant in New York City, to compete with hydroelectric power close to an area of high demand. By 1886, between 40 and 50 hydroelectric stations were operating in the United States and in Canada, and by 1888 about 200 electric companies relied on hydropower for at least part of their generation.
Recognizing that the great hydroelectric potential of the Falls exceeded the local demand for electricity, a large power company was established nonetheless at the prime location for development; it awaited the prospect of an effective long-distance power transmission system. Westinghouse Electric won the competition, developing their plans around an alternating current system. The station was completed in 1895 and in 1896, electricity transmission 20 miles away to Buffalo, New York began. This event also began the rise to dominance of the AC system over Thomas Edison's direct current methods. Multiple permanent hydropower stations still exist on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls, including the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant, the third largest in the United States.
The need to provide rural development in the early 20th century was often coupled to the availability of electric power and led to large-scale projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority which created numerous dams and, sometimes controversially, flooded large areas. In the 1930s, the need for power in the Southwest led to the building of the largest concrete construction in the world at that time, the Hoover Dam. The Grand Coulee Dam was both a power and irrigation project of the 1930s that was expanded for military industrial reasons during World War II which also saw other dams such as the TVA's Fontana Dam built.
Dam building peaked in the 1960s and few dams were built in the 1970s. The growing awareness of environmental issues with dams saw the removal of some older and smaller dams and the installation of fish ladders at others. The enormous Rampart Dam was canceled in 1967 due to environmental and economic concerns. Instead of new dams, repowering old stations has increased the capacity of several facilities. For instance, Hoover Dam replaced its generators between 1986 and 1993. The need to alter downstream waterflow for ecological reasons (eliminating invasive species, sedimentation, etc.) has led to regulated seasonal drawdowns at some dams, changing the availability of water for power generation. Droughts and increased agricultural use of water can also lead to generation limits.
According to a United States Department of Energy report, there exists over 12,000 MW of potential hydroelectricity capacity in the US existing 80,000 unpowered dams. Harnessing the currently unpowered dams could generate 45 TWhr/yr, equivalent to 16 percent of 2008 hydroelectricity generation.
Pumped storage.
Another application of hydroelectricity is Pumped-storage hydroelectricity which does not create a net gain in power but enables peak demand balancing. Water is pumped from a lower elevation source into a higher one and only released through generators when electric demand is high. In 2009 the United States had 21.5 GW of pumped storage generating capacity, accounting for 2.5% of baseload generating capacity. This increased to a total of 22,878 MW in 2019. Bath County Pumped Storage Station is the largest such facility in the world. Other stations of this type include Raccoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant, Bear Swamp Hydroelectric Power Station and Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant on Lake Michigan and previously the largest in the world.
Tidal power.
No significant tidal power plants exist in the United States. A project was proposed and run by the Snohomish County PUD in Washington but was ended when trouble was encountered obtaining enough funding.
Largest hydroelectric power stations.
This is a list of the ten largest hydroelectric power stations in the United States by installed capacity.


Icelink

Icelink is a proposed electricity interconnector between Iceland and Great Britain. At 1000–1200 km, the 800MW-1200 MW HVDC link would be the longest sub-sea power interconnector in the world.
The project partners are National Grid plc in the UK, Landsvirkjun, the state-owned generator in Iceland, and Landsnet, the Icelandic Transmission System Operator (TSO).
In 2017 the project was still at the feasibility stage,
but, as of 2019, no further progress had been reported.
According to Landsvirkjun, it will take about five years to complete feasibility and other work, and if a decision is made to go ahead, construction and installation would take a further five to six years.
At the 2019 UK General Election 2019 the Democratic Unionist Party included in their manifesto a proposal for the Icelink to make landfall in Northern Ireland


Al-Fadhili back-to-back HVDC converter station

The Al-Fadhili back-to-back HVDC station is a back-to-back HVDC connection between Saudi Arabia, whose grid operates at 60 Hz, and its neighbouring Gulf states which have 50 Hz grids. The station is located in Saudi Arabia, approximately 100 km north-west of Dammam, but was built for and owned by Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Authority (GCCIA). The converter station was built by Areva T&D, now Alstom Grid, between 2006 and 2009.
GCCIA is constructing a 400 kV, 50 Hz AC transmission line to interconnect Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar through Saudi Arabia. Later phases will also connect Oman and United Arab Emirates. The Al-Fadhili HVDC system allows power to be exchanged between the 50 Hz GCCIA system and the 60 Hz Saudi Electricity Company system.
The converter station consists three identical poles, each with a nominal power transmission rating of 600 MW and an overload rating of 660 MW. Each pole has nominal DC voltage and current ratings of 222 kV, 2776 A.
Unlike most HVDC systems, which are designed to be used more or less continuously for transmission of power, the Al-Fadhili system is normally intended to remain in standby mode, only transmitting power between the two systems after a major loss of generation in one system. The converter poles are normally kept blocked but the control systems continuously monitor the frequencies of the two grids and, upon detection of a sudden change of frequency, deblock one or two poles as needed to restore the shortage of power. This allows "Spinning reserve" to be shared between the two system and as a result the concept is known as "Dynamic Reserve Power Sharing" (DRPS). With a total power rating of 1800 MW, the Al-Fadhili system was, on completion, the largest HVDC back-to-back system in the world and the first HVDC system in the Middle East.


YTL Power

YTL Power International Berhad (), a subsidiary of YTL Corporation, generates and sells power as an independent power producer to Tenaga Nasional for uploading onto the National Grid, Malaysia.
In December 2010, YTL Power acquired 30% stake in Eesti Energia's oil shale development project in Jordan.


New Brunswick System Operator

The New Brunswick System Operator (NBSO) was an independent not-for-profit statutory corporation created under New Brunswick's Electricity Act on October 1, 2004. Under the Act, the NBSO was responsible for the adequacy and reliability of the integrated electricity system, and for facilitating the development and operation of the New Brunswick Electricity Market. These responsibilities took the form of operation of the NBSO-controlled grid and administration of the Open Access Transmission Tariff (Tariff) and the New Brunswick Electricity Market Rules.
Dissolution.
New Brunswick's new Electricity Act (the “Act”) was proclaimed on October 1, 2013. Among other things, the Act saw the amalgamation of the NBSO with the NB Power Group of Companies.
Legislation continues the requirement for open and non–discriminatory transmission access in New Brunswick. The system operation functions that were currently performed by the NBSO are now performed within a vertically integrated NB Power.
NBSO's role in the adoption, monitoring and enforcement of North American reliability standards had been transferred to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board.
Responsibilities.
The NBSO was the Balancing Authority for New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Northern Maine, and the Transmission Provider for New Brunswick. NBSO provided load following and regulation service to the system in order to supply improvince customer load while maintaining scheduled flows on interconnections within established limits. These limits were set out in interconnection agreements with neighbouring system operators.
Reliability coordination.
The NBSO was one of 17 Reliability Coordinators in North America. As Reliability Coordinator for the Maritimes Area, NBSO was the authority responsible for the operation of the Bulk Power System in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and a portion of northeastern Maine. The NBSO was part of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council, which oversaw electricity reliability in the Northeastern United States, the Maritimes, Quebec, and Ontario.


Dick Smith (retailer)

Dick Smith Holdings Limited (formerly Dick Smith, Dick Smith Electronics or DSE) was an Australian chain of retail stores that sold consumer electronics goods, hobbyist electronic components, and electronic project kits. The chain expanded successfully into New Zealand and unsuccessfully into several other countries. The company was founded in Sydney in 1968 by Dick Smith and owned by him and his wife until they sold 60% to Woolworths Limited in 1980, the remaining 40% two years later. The company closed its stores in 2016, four years after its acquisition by Anchorage Capital Partners.
History.
Early years.
The business started in 1968 in a small $15-rent-per-week premises in a car park in the Sydney suburb of Neutral Bay with a total capital of only AU$610 (equivalent to A$7500 in 2018). Initially, the business focused on installing and servicing car radios. In 1969, the business's success required it to move to bigger premises, first Atkinson Street, St Leonards, later Carlotta Street, Artarmon with flagship store nearby, on the Pacific Highway, Gore Hill.
When the entire electronics business landscape was remodelled by the Whitlam government's across-the-board 25% tariff cut in 1973, for the loss of 138,000 manufacturing jobs, Smith moved with the market and met the competition with a re-emphasis on imported electronic components and finished products. Alongside the car radio business, he opened "Dick Smith Wholesale". The business catered to electronics hobbyists, meeting a need Smith had felt. In those days, hobbyists could buy components only from larger wholesale companies better set up for dealing with commercial customers. After touring overseas electronic stores to study modern merchandising methods, Smith introduced self-serve shopping, a breakaway from the longstanding counter-sales setup found in component sales at the time, and produced an annual mail-order catalogue with a substantial data section.
Publicity stunts.
The company promoted itself with wacky-style and Smith's own publicity stunts. For example, Smith claimed that he would tow an iceberg from Antarctica to Sydney Harbour, cut it up into small bits and sell it for 10 cents a cube. On the morning of 1 April 1978, it appeared as if he had succeeded as hundreds of phone calls reporting the iceberg began flooding into local newspapers and radio and television stations, most of which were from Dick Smith employees. The "iceberg" turned out to be a barge cloaked in white plastic sheeting and topped with firefighting foam, an April Fool's joke.
Expansion.
The company profited from the CB radio boom of the 1970s and by the end of the decade had stores in all mainland states. Though many CB radio stores closed when interest waned at the end of the 70s, Dick Smith Electronics thrived on exploding PC sales and its established electronic components and kit lines.
To ensure almost every electronic enthusiast in Australia had one of his catalogues, it was included free in the popular electronics magazines "Electronics Australia" and "Electronics Today International". The catalogues included ever-increasing amounts of data on electronic components, which helped make it an essential reference for anyone involved in electronics professionally or as a hobby.
Private-branding (as "Dick Smith" or "DSE") was introduced on a large range of products from the late-70s. Many DSE-brand products were re-branded versions of the same or similar products sold in parallel by their manufacturers.
Dick Smith Electronics own-brand System 80 computer, which was a clone of the Tandy TRS-80 Model I, led a highly successful line, including the Dick Smith Cat (an Apple II clone), the VZ-200 and VZ-300. The company also sold brand name personal computers such as the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64. In 1981, the Super-80 kit computer was developed as a joint venture between the company and Electronics Australia magazine.
The company expanded its product range, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, and stocked items such as the Heathkit electronic kits, satellite TV receiving stations, Beeple pagers and the Dick Smith Wizzard computer game. The company was an early seller of telephone equipment including answering machines, cordless and novelty phones.
Woolworths takeover.
In 1980, the company had grown to 20 stores and the founder and his wife sold 60% of the company's shares to large general retailer Woolworths Limited. The Smiths sold the balance of the company's capital to Woolworths in 1982, the total transfer price coming to A$25million. The company continued to add to its network of small "main street" stores in suburbs and regional cities across Australia.
Powerhouse.
The late 1990s saw the company establish "Dick Smith Powerhouse" super-stores across the east coast of Australia. The first Powerhouse store was opened in Bankstown, New South Wales in 1996. These were several times bigger than regular stores at approximately and contained departments for the main product categories and supermarket-style checkouts. The "Powerhouses", as they were known, carried a wider range of products than the smaller DSE stores, especially in the computing, audio-visual and amateur radio areas, and introduced Music to the range. Some installation services were also introduced as well as Computer repairs and upgrading.
In 2002 and 2003, the Powerhouse concept changed to focus on a broader consumer market and less towards electronics enthusiasts. Component ranges shrank and general electronics books ceased to be stocked. The Yaesu amateur radio dealership was relinquished, ending a 27-year partnership. Electronic kits were transferred to the smaller DSE stores and were replaced by the short-lived appearance of small appliances such as kettles, coffee makers, toasters and frypans. A home installation service known as "PowerSquad" to install major items such as TVs and computer systems or to provide set-up and training on smaller items such as wireless networking and MP3 players was offered. In late 2007, Powerhouse stores also transferred many other small components, tools, leads and connectors to small stores, continuing to distance the super-stores from the company's electronic enthusiast roots.
Major changes.
In early 2008, following Woolworths' review of its consumer electronics division, Dick Smith Electronics renovated its flagship store in Hornsby, New South Wales, as a "concept" under the branding "Dick Smith Technology". The store's design and product range was completely reworked incorporating a more modern feel while removing all electrical componentry and much of its tools. These products were replaced with a larger range of Windows computers, gaming, televisions and Macintosh computers, much of which had previously been only sold in Powerhouse stores.
Following further strategic review, the company decided to push forward with the new concept under the reworked "Dick Smith – Talk to the Techxperts" branding, merging all existing Dick Smith Electronics and Powerhouse stores under the same banner. In late 2008 the new Dick Smith logo and format was rolled out with many Powerhouse stores such as Macquarie Centre and Auburn being rebranded to fit the new unified company logo.
"Large Format Stores" opened in Chadstone Shopping Centre and Bendigo in Victoria, Marion, South Australia, Perth central business district, Innaloo and Rockingham in Western Australia, Hobart in Tasmania, and Stockland Rockhampton in Queensland, under new "Dick Smith – Talk to the Techxperts" branding.
In March 2009, Woolworths Limited CEO Michael Luscombe confirmed the end of Powerhouse as a separate entity, also adding that the company's third consumer electronics brand Tandy would be gradually phased out over the next three years as the stores' leases ended. This phase left "Dick Smith" as the sole brand in the parent company's consumer electronics division.
The mail-order catalogue so central to the company's success from the early days was last published in 2009, giving way to the online sales platform.
Acquisition by Anchorage Capital.
On 31 January 2012, after nearly 30 years of ownership, Woolworths announced that after the results of a strategic review and a $300 million restructuring, it would close up to 100 Dick Smith stores and sell the business. The company was sold to Australian investment firm Anchorage Capital Partners in September 2012, for an initial cash payment of A$20 million and ultimate total price of some $115 million. It has been argued that Anchorage only put up $10 million in cash, the remainder of the funds being sourced from the business itself through liquidation of inventory, plant and equipment, and taking provision for future onerous lease payments, a process described as "the greatest private equity heist of all time". In November 2012, Nick Abboud was appointed CEO.
In December 2013, Dick Smith was floated by Anchorage on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), becoming a public company. At the time of the listing, the market capitalisation of the company was valued at A$520 million, less than two years after Anchorage had purchased the company for A$20 million. Anchorage initially retained 20% of the shares in the new company but had fully divested their holdings by September 2014.
Alliance with David Jones.
From 1 October 2013, Dick Smith took over the operation of the home entertainment department in 30 David Jones retail stores in Australia and online. The venture traded under the banner "David Jones Electronics Powered by Dick Smith" and promoted televisions, computers, tablets, home office, audio-visual and other digital products, with employees and inventory transferred over to Dick Smith.
By the second half of 2014, sales were running at A$1.4 billion per annum.
Closure.
On 4 January 2016, with the value of shares in Dick Smith Holdings having fallen by more than 80% since they were listed on the ASX in December 2013, a halt in trading was requested. The following day, Dick Smith Holdings Limited (and associated entities) was placed into administration by its major creditors National Australia Bank (NAB) and HSBC Bank Australia. McGrathNicol were appointed as administrators by the company's board but receivers Ferrier Hodgson were appointed by the creditors. CEO Nick Abboud stepped down on 12 January.
Having failed to secure a buyer for the stores, receivers Ferrier Hodgson announced, on 25 February 2016, that all 363 DSE stores in Australia and New Zealand would be closed, with the loss of 2,460 jobs.
On 15 March 2016 it was revealed that Kogan.com, the online retailer founded by Ruslan Kogan, had acquired the Dick Smith brand, trademarks, intellectual property, and its online business in Australia and New Zealand for an undisclosed price. The Dick Smith brand has been transitioned to an online-only store selling a wide variety of consumer items.
The last physical retail stores closed on 3 May 2016.
On 25 July 2016 Dick Smith Electronics' creditors placed what was then left of the company in liquidation. Creditors were expected to lose up to A$260 million.
Though not connected with the company for 34 years, its founder Dick Smith expressed dismay at the closure and put it down to the "utter greed of modern capitalism".
Outside Australia.
Hong Kong.
DSE's first foray offshore was the establishment Dick Smith Electronics (HK) Limited in Hong Kong in 1978. It operated a small buying office and one retail store, at two locations in Ashley Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. The store targeted tourists generally and Australians, in particular, looking for tax-free DSE products. An international edition of the flagship catalogue was published in support of the operation. In the face of fierce competition from established local retailers and disappointing sales, the business closed in June 1980.
New Zealand.
Dick Smith Electronics registered for business in New Zealand in 1981 and is believed to have opened a store the same year. In 1992, the company acquired and rebranded the retail business of David Reid Electronics, a similar chain that at one time consisted of about 30 stores. In some cases, this meant that for a time two Dick Smith stores operated in the same suburb.
In New Zealand, Dick Smith Electronics had over 75 locations. They included the "Powerhouse" stores, the first of which opened in Hamilton, followed by Manukau and Sylvia Park in Auckland, and Palmerston North. A third brand "Dick Smith Technology" store opened in Lower Hutt, following the same Powerhouse product range. Its e-commerce website had been using a search engine by SLI Systems that learns from what the users search for. The PowerHouse brand was discontinued in 2009.
United States.
From 1980, DSE operated a small number of stores in the United States, in Northern California and Los Angeles, but had closed by the end of the decade.
Sponsorships.
DSE sponsored the Melbourne Stars in the T20 Big Bash League cricket, a number of tennis tournaments including the Hopman Cup (Western Australia), the World Tennis Challenge (South Australia), the Brisbane International (Queensland) and the Apia International (Sydney).
The company was a sponsor of the National Rugby League nine-a-side tournament, the Auckland Nines and of the AFL club Richmond from 2008 until the end of 2011.


Origin Energy

Origin Energy is an Australian listed public energy company with headquarters in Sydney. It is an Australian Stock Exchange publicly listed company.
History.
Origin Energy was formed 18 February 2000, as a result of a demerger of the Australian conglomerate, Boral Limited, which saw the energy business formed as a new company, separate from the building and construction materials business. SAGASCO became part of Origin Energy as part of the demerger.
Between 2001 and 2002, Origin acquired a Victorian electricity retailer licence from distributors Powercor and CitiPower. In 2004, the SEAGas pipeline was completed, linking the Victorian and South Australian gas markets. During this time, Origin obtained 50% interest in the Kupe Gas Field and Edison Mission Energy's 51.4% interest in New Zealand's Contact Energy. Origin sold its 53% shareholding in Contact Energy to the market in 2015.
On 27 November 2006, the Queensland Government announced the sale of Sun Retail Pty Ltd, the former retailing arm of Energex to Origin for $1.202 billion.
On 15 December 2010, Origin Energy announced that it would purchase the retail divisions of Country Energy and Integral Energy from the Government of New South Wales, at a total cost of A$3.25 billion, as well as entering a GenTrader agreement with Eraring Energy (in which Origin supplies fuel, pays certain charges, and can dispatch and sell electricity output, while Eraring Energy owns, operates and maintains the power stations). The transaction was completed on 1 March 2011.
Core business.
Natural gas exploration and production.
The company's portfolio includes the Bowen and Surat Basins in Queensland, Browse Basin in Western Australia, and the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory. In 2017 Origin sold its subsidiary Lattice Energy and its conventional upstream oil and gas business to Beach Energy for $1,585 million.
Australia Pacific LNG, Queensland, Australia.
Origin Energy is a major shareholder together with US giant ConocoPhillips and China's Sinopec, in a joint venture of Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG). The project consists of development of Australia Pacific LNG's gas fields in the Surat and Bowen Basins, construction of a 530 km gas transmission pipeline from the gas fields to an LNG facility on Curtis Island and construction of an LNG facility on Curtis Island.
On 26 October 2017, gas producer and exporter APLNG entered into a sales agreement with Origin Energy, to supply 41 petajoules of gas under a 14-month contract starting 1 November. The contract brings the company's total commitment to 186 PJ for 2018, representing almost 30% of Australian east coast domestic gas market demand.
Energy retailing.
Origin has approximately 4.217 million customers, servicing both large energy customers and the residential and small business market.
Electricity generation.
Origin operates is able to generate 6,010 MW of electricity capacity. This represents approximately 13 per cent of power generation capacity in the National Electricity Market.
Controversies.
Whistleblower allegations.
In January 2017, "The Guardian" reported allegations of whistleblower Sally McDow, a former compliance manager at Origin. She claimed that the company had ignored various wellfield integrity problems, including failing to maintain hundreds of wells across Australia and New Zealand, failing to seal wells after their active lives and failing to report incidents internally or to the appropriate regulators. She also described a culture of bullying and harassment within the organisation. She said that she had advised the CEO at the time, and Grant King (then President of the Business Council of Australia) but that King did not want the incidents reported. He allegedly stated that the incidents could be used by opponents of the unconventional gas industry to delay or halt current or future projects. Origin denied the allegations.
Beetaloo Basin fracking.
Origin was approved by the Northern Territory government to start fracking in August 2019 and drilling commenced in October 2019. Fracking began in September 2020 following a six-month COVID-19 induced stand down. Origin has postponed production at their Kyalla well site to the second half of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Concerns were expressed by local officials on the fracking operation, fearing that it could affect their ability to get groundwater and stating the local officials did not fully understand the contracts they were signing with petroleum companies. There were also accusations that Origin did not consult with traditional landowners before starting their plans and the emissions that would be generated from the project. The Northern Land Council responded by saying they understood the text in the contracts and consulted with traditional Aboriginal landowners. Origin stated that they conduct multiple checks when installing a well and fracking stops if a check fails.
Misleading information.
In December 2020, Origin was fined $126,000 after the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission issued an infringement for misleading information regarding price increases in a letter sent out Victorian customers in December 2019. Origin stated in the letter that electricity prices were changing because of the Victorian Essential Services Commission's increase to the Victorian Default Offer, a price set by the Victorian Essential Services Commission. However, the ACCC states that the price increase was entirely Origin's choice and they chose to increase prices.


Hydroelectricity in Russia

Hydropower is the most used form of renewable energy in Russia, and there is large potential in Russia for more use of hydropower.
According to the International Hydropower Association Russia is the seventh largest producer of hydroelectricity in 2020.
It is also second in the world for hydro potential, yet only 20% of this potential is developed.
Russia is home to 9% of the world's hydro resources, mostly in Siberia and the country's far east.
At the end of 2005, the generating capacity from hydroelectric sources in Russia was 45,700 MW, and an additional 5,648 MW was under construction. The World Energy Council believes that Russia has much potential for using its hydro resources, with a theoretical potential of about 2,295 TWh/yr, with 852 TWh being economically feasible.
The largest dams in Russia are the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam, which has an installed capacity of 6,400 MW; the Krasnoyarsk Dam (6,000 MW); the Bratsk Dam (4,500 MW); the Ust-Ilimsk Dam (4,320 MW) and the Zeya Dam (1,330 MW). Some of the most recent dam projects are the Bureya Dam (2010 MW) and the Irganai Dam (800 MW). The Boguchany Dam (1920 MW), Zelenchuk Dam (320 MW), Zaramag Dam (352 MW) and Nizhne-Chereksky (60 MW) are currently under construction. RusHydro is the largest hydroelectric company in Russia and the second largest hydroelectric producer in the world. In October 2010, China Yangtze Power, the largest hydropower corporation in China, and EuroSibEnergo, a Russian energy company, signed a cooperation agreement to expand hydroelectric energy production in Russia and export energy to China's northern territories. The West Siberian Generating Company has plans to start construction of eight mini-hydroelectric power plants in the Altai region before 2015.
Accidents.
On 17 August 2009, there was an explosion at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant, which killed 75 plant workers and injured 13. The Federal Service for Ecological, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision's investigation concluded that poor management and technical flaws were responsible. The explosion was caused by a 29-year-old turbine that experienced an uncontrolled and excessive vibration. Since then, officials from RusHydro, the operator of the plant, have called for better oversight and safety at hydroelectric plants.


China Huadian Corporation

China Huadian Corporation (Huadian Group; ) is one of the five largest state-owned power generation enterprises in China, administrated by SASAC for the State Council. It engages in the generation and supply of electricity and heat, and the development of power-related primary energy. It produces about 10% of China's power along with Huaneng Group, Datang Group, SPIC and China Energy.


List of solar power plants in Vietnam

This is a list of solar power plants in Vietnam.
Source: Initial query from DEVI Renewable Energies, updated using press releases
Note: Construction start + COD Date form: day/month/year


China Three Gorges Corporation

The China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG; ) is a Chinese state-owned power company, established on 27 September 1993. The company was responsible for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam-project, the world's largest hydroelectric power plant, that went into operation in 2008. In September 2002, CTG established the subsidiary company China Yangtze Power, which took over operations and management of Gezhouba and Three Gorges dams. CTG is one of the world's largest energy companies with total assets of RMB 475.5 billion (app. USD 77.3 billion) in 2014.
Business.
Apart from Gezhouba and the Three Gorges Dam, CTG operates and develops other hydroelectric projects on the Yangtze River - Xiangjiaba Dam, Xiluodu Dam (the world's third largest hydroelectric power plant), Baihetan Dam and Wudongde Dam. By the end of 2014 CTG had 46.3 GW of total hydropower installed capacity in China and over 28 GW of total installed capacity under construction or development.
CTG is developing wind power (since 2007) and solar power (since 2011) business. As of 2014 it has 31 wind power projects in operation and 33 under construction or development, 37 solar power projects in operation and 18 under construction or development. Total installed capacity is 3,707 MW in operation, with 3,050 MW under construction or development.
As of the end of 2013, CTG had business in 37 countries and regions, with 84 ongoing international construction
and investment projects. In December 2011, China Three Gorges Corporation acquired a 21.35% Portuguese government's stake in "Energias de Portugal" for €2.69 billion.
In December 2011 China Three Gorges Corporation paid HK$2.1 billion (US$270 million) for a 29% stake in China Power New Energy Development.
Controversy.
In August 2020, the United States Department of Defense published the names of companies with links to the People's Liberation Army operating directly or indirectly in the United States. CTG was included on the list. In November 2020, Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting any American company or individual from owning shares in companies that the United States Department of Defense has listed as having links to the People's Liberation Army, which included CTG.
External links.


Guide vane


Electricity supply companies in Karnataka

The Electricity Supply Companies, also known as ESCOMs, are responsible for electric power distribution in state of Karnataka. Its origin was in Karnataka Electricity Board. This distribution entity was incorporated to provide efficient and reliable electric power supply to the people of Karnataka state
Karnataka's electricity department is broadly classified into the following three major groups:=
History.
In 1999, Karnataka embarked on a major reform of the power sector. As a first step, Karnataka Electricity Board (KEB) was dissolved and in its place, the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) was incorporated.
This was followed by the constitution of Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) in November 1999.
In the next phase of the reform process, the transmission and distribution business managed by KPTCL were unbundled in June 2002. The distribution companies were formed to distribute power in Karnataka.


Heptode


6N3P

The 6N3P (Russian: 6Н3П) is a Russian-made direct equivalent of the 2C51 medium gain dual triode vacuum tube. It may be used as an amplifier, mixer, oscillator or multivibrator over a frequency range AF through VHF. The Russian tube is slightly larger in size than the American tube.
Basic data.
Uf = 6.3 V, If = 350 mA, μ = 36, Ia = 7.7 mA, S = 4.9 mA/V, Pa = 1.5 W
History of use.
6N3P was widely used for FM band radio input unit stages (nearly all 1960s Soviet radios with FM band employed the same input unit on a separate sub-chassis). Currently it has found use in DIY preamps. A ruggedized/industrial version of the tube is designated 6N3P-EV (Russian: 6Н3П-ЕВ).
Chinese 6N3.
eBay has proliferated with pre-amps apparently from Hong Kong that are largely populated with the 6N3, which is said to be the Chinese version of the 6N3P. The 6N3Ps are newly made (unlike the Soviet "new old stock," and the pre-amps appear to be the product of a cottage hifi industry).