Dynegy

Dynegy Inc. was an electric company based in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It owned and operated a number of power stations in the U.S., all of which were natural gas-fueled or coal-fueled, until merging with Vistra Energy on April 9, 2018. The company is located at 601 Travis Street in Downtown Houston. The company was founded in 1984 as Natural Gas Clearinghouse. It was originally an energy brokerage, buying and selling natural gas supplies. It changed its name to NGC Corporation in 1995 after entering the electrical power generation business.
The company adopted the name Dynegy in 1998. Dynegy maintained a rivalry with the Houston-based Enron energy and trading firm, which it agreed to buy in 2001. Dynegy withdrew from the deal as the extent of Enron wrongdoing emerged.
Dynegy nearly went bankrupt in 2002, and several executives were eventually convicted of financial fraud and mismanagement. Dynegy exited the energy trading business in 2002 and the natural gas supply business in 2005, focusing its efforts on electrical generation. The company has one major subsidiary, Dynegy Holdings. It also has three operating subsidiaries: GasCo, CoalCo, and the "stub group" (for other miscellaneous business enterprises).
Dynegy Inc. was the subject of two unsuccessful takeover efforts in 2010. Its Dynegy Holdings subsidiary went bankrupt in November 2011, and Dynegy Inc. itself filed for bankruptcy protection on July 6, 2012. Its GasCo and CoalCo subsidiaries were unaffected by the bankruptcy filing. Dynegy emerged from bankruptcy on October 2, 2012. On April 9, 2018 Vistra Energy closed its acquisition of Dynegy following a FERC determination that the $1.7 billion deal raised no competitive concerns.
Corporate predecessors.
Natural Gas Clearinghouse.
Natural Gas Clearinghouse (NGC) was created in 1985 by Charles Watson; a consortium of natural gas pipeline companies that included Transco; investment bank Morgan Stanley; and the legal firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. A major investor was Kenneth Lay, later the chief executive officer of the energy firm Enron. Its first headquarters was on the 40th floor of the Transco Tower in Houston, Texas. NGC was so successful that in 1985 Morgan Stanley bought out some of the other investors and took a majority stake in the company.
NGC was purchased by Noble Affiliates, Inc. and Apache Corporation, independent oil and gas exploration and production companies, for a reported $50 million in 1989. In 1993, LG&E Energy Corporation took a stake in NGC, which by then was the largest independent natural gas marketing firm in the United States and had revenues of more than US$2 billion. NGC purchased Trident NGL in 1994 in a deal worth more than $750 million. That same year, it also established a partnership with Nova (also known as Novagas Clearinghouse, a natural gas marketing company based in Canada) and British Gas, which gave both companies a financial stake in NGC.
NGC Corporation.
Natural Gas Clearinghouse shortened its name to NGC Corporation in 1995 after its merger with Trident NGL closed. It became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange that same year. By 1996, it had grown to US$550 million in assets, and carried US$525 million in long-term debt. NGC Corporation also established several subsidiaries to enable it to enter the electrical generation, marketing, and sales areas. Electric Clearinghouse sold electricity, and the Energy Store marketed it. In August 1996, it purchased the natural gas gathering, marketing, and processing operations of Chevron Corporation. The latter deal gave Chevron a 29 percent stake in NGC. NGC followed that deal by buying Destec Energy for US$1.27 billion. The deal required NGC Corporation to sell Destec's power generation subsidiaries in Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom for US$407 million, although NGC Corporation retained Destec's 20 domestic gas-fired power plants.
Dynegy history.
Growth.
In June 1998, NGC Corporation changed its name to Dynegy, Inc. The company's original slogan was "We believe in people." Nova announced two months later that it was seeking to sell its stake in Dynegy. Dynegy bought Illinova Corporation in 1999 in a deal worth US$1.75 billion and the assumption of US$2.25 billion of Illinova Corp. debt. The deal also allowed Nova and British Gas to sell their stake in Dynegy.
Dynegy also began branching into areas outside natural gas and electrical generation. In August 2000, the company announced that it had purchased Extant Inc., a broadband provider building a nationwide fiber optic network, for US$152.5 million.
Dynegy, along with Enron, El Paso Corporation, Reliant Energy, and several other energy companies, was accused of price manipulation and other fraudulent practices during the California electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001. The case against Dynegy was dismissed in 2003.
In 2001, Dynegy made a white knight US$8 billion takeover bid for Enron, which was saddled with $13 billion in debt and whose stock had plummeted. The deal began unraveling two weeks later as Enron revealed even larger financial losses and more debt than previously reported. Dynegy withdrew its merger offer on November 28. Enron sued Dynegy on December 2, the day after Enron declared bankruptcy. (The lawsuit was settled in August 2002 after Dynegy agreed to pay Enron US$25 million for backing out of the deal.) Enron attempted to sell off assets in an effort to stay afloat. On January 3, 2002, Dynegy successfully acquired Enron's Northern Natural Gas Company pipeline. NNGC was Enron's most lucrative pipeline asset and had been put up as collateral in return for Dynegy providing financing to Enron during merger talks.
Near-bankruptcy of 2002.
Dynegy came close to bankruptcy in 2002. Investor pressure on energy stocks in the wake of the Enron collapse pushed Dynegy's stock price down 42 percent by late April. The company also admitted on April 26 that it made a large accounting error on a fuel contract, which further depressed the stock price 22 percent. Moody's Investors Service announced it was reviewing all US$4 billion of Dynegy debt. In financial distress, Dynegy successfully applied for a US$900 million line of credit. On May 1, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened a formal investigation into how Dynegy's "Project Alpha", an internal corporate initiative that allegedly inflated income from natural gas transactions and illegally structured business partnerships to avoid income. Two weeks later, the "New York Times" reported that Dynegy's Illinova subsidiary was part of the investigation. Illinova had formed a joint partnership named Catlin in January 2000 with a little-known investment company named Black Thunder. Catlin took over some of Illinova's electrical generating assets. Although Black Thunder put up almost 90 percent of the money to form Catlin, Dynegy was required to buy out Black Thunder's investment or sell off the assets if Catlin did not earn a specified high rate of return. On May 28, Dynegy founder, president, and chief executive officer Charles Watson resigned. Dynegy Inc. chairman Dan Dienstbier was named interim CEO. In mid-June, Dynegy reported that its first quarter income had fallen 80 percent. It also admitted that it had signed long-term power contracts that would not produce revenue for years to come; but it had charged the income to the current year's revenues in an attempt to bolster its bottom line. On June 19, Dynegy's chief financial office, Rob Doty, resigned. The following day, Dynegy shut down its online energy trading system.
Dynegy was quickly approaching bankruptcy by late June 2002. On June 25, the company announced it would sell off assets in an attempt to raise US$2 billion in cash. Moody's downgraded the rating of the company's bonds to "junk" status on June 28. Dynegy announced it might need a financial partner to help it stabilize. After the July 23 announcement, the company's shares dropped 64 percent. Desperate for cash, Dynegy sold the Northern Natural Gas Company to MidAmerican Energy Holdings for $928 million on July 29 ($572 less than it paid for it). The sale saved Dynegy from bankruptcy.
Although Dynegy avoided bankruptcy, the fallout from the company's accounting practices continued throughout 2002. In August, former Dynegy controller and chief accounting officer Bradley P. Farnsworth sued the company, saying he'd been fired after refusing to help manipulate the company's financial statements in the summer of 2000. The company suspended its dividend on August 12. On September 3, interim chairman Glenn F. Tilton resigned in order to become chief executive officer of United Airlines. On September 24, Dynegy announced that it had agreed to pay a US$3 million fine for using the Catlin company and other business partnerships to hide losses and taxable income. It also admitted that it had engaged in "round-trip" trades, phony natural gas and electricity trades designed to mislead investors and other companies about the success of Dynegy's online trading operation. The company later fired five traders after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) discovered that Dynegy energy traders had supplied false prices to industry trade publications. The company later paid a US$5 million fine to the CFTC. Still needing cash, Dynegy sold its Hornsea natural gas storage site in the United Kingdom to help pay the fine.
Dynegy shuttered its online energy trading business for good on October 16, 2002. The closure led Dynegy to lay off 14 percent of its workforce, which left it with just 4,600 employees.
Several Dynegy executives were later convicted or indicted for their roles in Dynegy's near-collapse. In June 2003, Jamie Olis (former Senior Director of Tax Planning), Gene Foster (former Vice President for Taxation), and Helen Sharkey (a former employee in Dynegy's risk control and deal structure groups), were indicted on numerous counts of mail and wire fraud. According to court documents, the three employees conceived of a plan in early 2001 to borrow money but make it look like operational revenue. A corporation known as ABG Gas Supply was created. ABG secured loans from Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, and Deutsche Bank to buy natural gas at market prices. ABG then sold this gas at a discount to Dynegy, which resold it at market prices and booked a $300 million profit. ABG then bought natural gas at market prices, and sold it at a premium to Dynegy. The profits ABG booked were then used to repay the loans. Prosecutors accused Olis, Foster, and Sharkey of deceiving auditors, regulators, and other company executives regarding the transactions. Foster and Sharkey plead guilty two months later. Olis was found guilty in March 2004, and sentenced to 24 years in prison. (A year later, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a different case held that mandatory sentencing guidelines violated the Constitution, Olis' sentence was reduced to just six years in prison.) In December 2003, three former executives at Nicor Energy LLC (a joint venture of Dynegy and Nicor), were indicted for illegally manipulating that firm's income by US$11 million in 2001 to hide losses. Former chief financial officer Robert Doty agreed to pay a $376,650 fine in October 2007 for his role in helping to conceal the ABG Gas Supply scheme.
Shareholders, too, were unhappy with Dynegy's actions during the financial crisis. A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in 2002. In April 2005, Dynegy agreed to settle the lawsuit. Shareholders would be paid a total of US$468 million. To come up with the money, Dynegy paid out $250 million in cash and issued $68 million in stock to the plaintiffs. Its insurance companies paid another $150 million to the plaintiffs.
Recovery and restructuring.
On October 23, 2002, Dynegy hired Bruce Williamson, a former Duke Energy executive, as its chief executive officer. Six weeks later, Dynegy hired Nick J. Caruso, a former chief financial officer at Royal Dutch Shell, as its new chief financial officer.
Williamson began a program of cost cutting, elimination of unprofitable businesses, and financial restructuring. As Williamson later told the "New York Times" in June 2005, "We had businesses in trading, in marketing, in broadband communications, in Europe, in communications as far as China. What we have done is very systematically sell those off, shut down offices and concentrate on the two businesses that looked like we had a competitive advantage." Dynegy sold its telecommunications business in Europe in January 2003, restated its income for 2001 and 2002, sold a natural gas terminal in Louisiana, sold its telecommunications business in North America in April 2003, engaged in a US$1.6 billion refinancing and other restructuring of its debt, sold its Illinois Power Company subsidiary to Ameren, and nullified a number of contracts in non-core or money-losing areas. In March 2004, Wiliamson was named chairman of the company, succeeding Dan Dienstbier (who retired).
Dynegy undertook a strategy to move into coal-fired and hydroelectric electrical generation in 2004, and out of natural gas distribution and trading. In November 2004, the company acquired four natural gas-fired and four hydroelectric power generation plants in the Northeast United States. In March 2005, it agreed to settle a 1999 dispute with the Environmental Protection Agency by spending US$321 million to repair and upgrade coal-fired generating plants in Illinois to reduce pollutants. In mid-2005, Dynegy hired Credit Suisse First Boston to assist it in finding a buyer for its natural gas transmission businesses. The sale of this business came quickly: In August 2005, Dynegy sold this business to Targa Resources, a company owned by private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
In September 2006, Dynegy and LS Power Group agreed to a joint venture in a deal worth US$2.3 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Dynegy gave LS Power a 40 percent stake in Dynegy itself while LS Power contributed 10 of its power plants. Dynegy also agreed to create a 245 million new Class B shares, which it turned over to LS Power. In May 2007, ChevronTexaco announced it was selling its 12 percent stake in Dynegy to the public. The sale netted ChevronTexaco US$680 million by July. The joint venture did not last, however. In August 2009, LS Power agreed to buy nine electrical generating plants from Dynegy for US$1.025 billion in cash in order to dissolve the joint venture. Part of the reason for the joint venture's demise was another collapse in Dynegy's share price. Dynegy's shares fell 80 percent in the two years after the deal closed, and the company posted a large $345 million loss in the second quarter of 2009. LS Power also agreed to return all its Class B shares, so that Dynegy would only have 95 million shares of common stock outstanding. The dissolution of the joint venture left LS Power with a 15 percent stake in Dynegy.
Dynegy's move into coal-powered electrical generation was not without controversy. In September 2007, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued Dynegy and other utilities, arguing that the companies were not properly accounting for the financial risks that pollutants from coal-fired generating plants created. After a year of negotiations and legal maneuvering, Dynegy agreed to issue statements to its current and future investors warning that government regulation of carbon emissions and lawsuits over pollution could pose financial risks to the company. Its move into coal-fired electrical generation led the National Environmental Trust, an environmental group, to derisively call Dynegy the "king of coal" in 2008.
Takeover battles.
On August 13, 2010, the Blackstone Group announced plans to purchase Dynegy for US$4.7 billion. As part of the deal, NRG Energy would acquire four natural gas plants in California and Maine for US$1.36 Billion. Seneca Capital, Dynegy's largest shareholder, fought the purchase in a proxy fight. Dynegy investor Carl Icahn also promised a proxy battle, arguing that Blackstone Group's offer was too low. Icahn raised his stake in Dynegy to 12.9 percent in preparation for the shareholder fight. Seneca Capital nominated former railroad executive E. Hunter Harrison and former energy company executive Jeff D. Hunter for the Dynegy board of directors, challenging Bruce Williamson and David Biegler (a Williamson ally).
A series of maneuvers followed. Dynegy executives said the offer was a good one, as the deal would give Dynegy access to lines of credit which would enable it to refinance and restructure its debt. With energy prices at cyclical lows, the company said it lacked the resources to do so and that its debt burden was destabilizing. Blackstone Group initially said it would not offer more than US$4.50 per share, but then revised its offer later that day to US$5.00 a share. Worried that it did not have enough shareholder support to accept the Blackstone Group offer, Dynegy proposed postponing its shareholder meeting a few days to November 23, but postponement did not occur. Legal counsel advised that Delaware law (under which Dynegy was incorporated) considered a postponement a new meeting, and that would require notifying shareholders (again) and giving at least 20 days' notice. Furthermore, Dynegy's proxy rules did not make it clear that a proxy remained in effect in the event of a postponement (which could lead to lawsuits). Legal counsel also believed that Dynegy management would be forced refile resolution with shareholders and resolicit votes, which would delay a meeting until early 2011. During the shareholder meeting, management's fears proved accurate. On November 19, Dynegy was forced to recess its shareholder meeting in an attempt to garner more support for the Blackstone bid. (Dynegy was unable to adjourn the meeting because its bylaws did not clearly provide for adjournment to another date, and because it was unclear that adjournment could occur without a shareholder vote—a vote the board felt it would lose.) During the four-day recess, Dynegy executives said the company would continue to solicit a takeover even if the Blackstone Group bid failed. On November 23, 2010, Dynegy management and Blackstone agreed to call off the takeover after it became clear there was not enough support for the US$5.00 a share bid.
On December 15, 2010, Icahn offered a US$5.50 a share cash bid for Dynegy. Dynegy's board asked for other bids, but none emerged. But Icahn, too, found little support among shareholders. He extended his offer by two weeks on January 25, 2011. That same day, Seneca Capital said it would not even entertain a US$6.00 a share bid. Dynegy's board urged shareholders to accept the Icahn bid, or risk bankruptcy. But by mid-February, even those investors willing to accept the Icahn bid had rescinded these offers. Icahn extended his offer by few days. The Icahn bid, too, collapsed.
On February 20, 2011, Bruce Williamson resigned as Dynegy's chairman, and announced he would step down as chief executive officer on March 11. Chief financial officer Holli C. Nichols also said she would resign as chief financial officer on March 11 as well. Board member Thomas W. Elward was named interim chairman, and Robert C. Flexon was appointed interim president and chief executive officer. Harrison was elected to the board of directors. Also elected to the board were Vincent J. Intrieri, Senior Managing Director of Icahn Capital, and Samuel J. Merksamer, an investment analyst for Icahn Capital.
2012 bankruptcy.
The takeover bids all came after one of Dynegy's largest subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy. On November 7, 2011 Dynegy Holdings, the largest of Dynegy Inc.'s four subsidiaries, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The bankruptcy was a novel one. Dynegy had structured itself so that Dynegy Inc. (the holding company) had little debt. Nearly all the debt was held by its subsidiary, Dynegy Holdings, which also guaranteed debt for the operating divisions. Dynegy Inc. created three operating divisions: the natural gas group (GasCo), the coal group (CoalCo), and a group for all other businesses (known as "the stub group"). GasCo and CoalCo were structured so that they would be little affected by any bankruptcy filing by either Dynegy Inc. or Dynegy Holdings. Part of the structure meant that few of the natural GasCo's and CoalCo's dividends were given to Dynegy Holdings. To separate Dynegy Holdings from Dynegy Inc., Dynegy Holdings was transformed from a corporation into a limited liability company (LLC). This legal maneuver took advantage of a Delaware Supreme Court ruling which made it difficult for creditors to sue an LLC's board of directors for failing to uphold their fiduciary duty. Finally, GasCo and CoalCo sold themselves to Dynegy Inc., which left Dynegy Holdings holding US$1.25 billion in debt but without the ability to seize the assets of GasCo and CoalCo in the event of a default. Under the structure adopted by Dynegy Inc., the company could meet its debt obligations to Dynegy Holdings by paying cash or by forgiving debt. This provided an incentive for Dynegy Inc. to withhold payment and force Dynegy Holdings to declare bankruptcy (thereby reducing the value of the debt and making it easier to pay off).
The restructuring plan put Dynegy's assets which had the worst financial performance into the hands of Dynegy Holdings. The goal was to protect Dynegy's secured creditors at the expense of its unsecured creditors. The plan had already generated one lawsuit. In 2011, U.S. Bancorp, representing bondholders whose investment was secured by leases of two Dynegy power plants new Newburgh, New York (the Danskammer Generating Station and the Roseton Generating Station).
On March 8, 2011, Dynegy submitted financial filings with government regulators warning investors that it faced bankruptcy if it could not restructure its debt. The company announced a month later that it had hired the restructuring firm Lazard and the law firm White & Case to advise it on debt restructuring. Vincent Intrieri was named chair of the boards finance and restructuring committee.
On March 9, 2012, the November 2011 bankruptcy of Dynegy Holdings ran into difficulty. An examiner appointed by the United States bankruptcy court found that the Dynegy Inc.'s purchase of CoalCo was fraudulent. The examiner found that Dynegy Holdings was already bankrupt at the time the sale took place, and therefore constituted a breach of fiduciary duty by the Dynegy Holdings board of directors. This allowed the Dynegy Holdings board of directors to sue the Dynegy Inc. board of directors for damages (which could run into the billions of dollars). This threw the Dynegy Holdings bankruptcy filing into doubt, and put Dynegy Inc. on the hook for billions in debt. The bankruptcy court trustee said she would sue on behalf of Dynegy Holdings to recover these debts.
The bankruptcy court examiner's finding quickly led to the bankruptcy of Dynegy Inc. itself. On April 3, 2012, Dynegy Inc. announced that it had reached an agreement with the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, the board of directors of Dynegy Holdings, and its other creditors. The agreement, which affected US$2.25 billion in debt, gave all creditors 99 percent of the stock of Dynegy Inc. once it emerged from bankruptcy. Existing shareholders would get just 1 percent of the stock in the new company, with warrants enabling them to buy up to 13.5 of common stock at a set price over the next five years. Accordingly, Dynegy Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 5, 2012. The bankruptcy plan filed by Dynegy Inc. also called for a merger with Dynegy Holdings. The bankruptcy filing did not, however, affect GasCo, CoalCo, or the "stub group", and allowed the Dynegy Holdings bankruptcy to proceed. Dynegy's stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange following the bankruptcy filing. U.S. Bancorp agreed to drop its lawsuit against the company in exchange for a $540 million claim against the company in bankruptcy court. The bondholders represented by U.S. Bancorp would also get a further US$31 million if the Danskammer and Roseton plants are sold.
As part of its bankruptcy filing, Dynegy moved its corporate headquarters. In November 2011, the company signed a lease for new principal offices in an office building at 601 Travis Street in Houston. (It occupied these quarters early July 2012.) Dynegy continued to hold leases on several floors of the Wells Fargo Plaza, however. As part of its bankruptcy filing, the bankruptcy court approved a new lease in which Dynegy would abandon of space at Wells Fargo Plaza. The company asked the court to cancel its lease on the remaining as well.
Dynegy said it hoped to hold a vote on August 24, at which time its creditors would approve the bankruptcy plan. A court hearing on the creditor-approved bankruptcy plan would then be held September 5, after which the company said it would emerge from bankruptcy protection.
Dynegy Inc. posted a second-quarter 2012 loss of $1.06 billion, an increase to $8.65 per share from 95 cents per share a year ago. The company blamed, among other things, markedly lower demand for its electricity, much lower prices for its coal, and a $941 million noncash loss caused by the transfer of its coal unit to Dynegy Holdings. The company also said it now hoped to emerge from bankruptcy in September 2012.
Dynegy agreed to auction off its Roseton and Danskammer energy plants in New York state in order to emerge from bankruptcy. Dynegy had signed a sale-leaseback agreement in 2001 with Public Services Enterprise Group for the Roseton and Danskammer facilities. Fifty percent of the proceeds from the auction would be used to pay bondholders (up to $571 million), while the remaining 50 percent would be used to pay unsecured creditors. The unsecured creditors would get $200 million in cash. Unsecured creditors also would receive 99 percent of Dynegy's new stock, with the company retaining the rest (with warrants to purchase 13.5 percent of the stock after five years). Dynegy also agreed to pay holders of $206 million in subordinated capital income securities just $55 million in principal and $16 million in interest to settle their claims. The bankruptcy agreement also settled claims between Dynegy Holdings and Dynegy, Inc.
Dynegy emerged from bankruptcy on October 2, 2012, and its shares began trading on October 3 under the "DYN" symbol.
Post-bankruptcy.
On November 5, 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission settled a decade-old lawsuit which alleged that Dynegy had manipulated the California energy market. While the lawsuit continued, Dynegy sold its California subsidiary to NRG Energy, Inc. NRG Energy subsequently agreed to pay $20 million in refunds to consumers as well as spend more than $100 million to install 200 public fast-charging electric vehicle stations and 10,000 plug-in stations throughout California. Twenty percent of the stations were required to be in low-income neighborhoods.
On January 4, 2013, Dynegy's Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Howell, resigned. Howell continued as a consultant to the company, and agreed to stay on until a successor was named in order to provide an orderly transition.
On February 2, 2013, Dynegy's South Bay Power Plant in San Diego, California, was imploded. The demolition of the smokestacks of the outmoded plant was watched by more than 1,000 people.
Roseton and Danskammer sales.
The sale of the Roseton and Danskammer plants—a condition of Dynegy's emergence from bankruptcy—proceeded slowly. On November 8, 2012, members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 320 struck the Roseton and Danskammer plants after a contract extension expired and Dynegy continued to seek cuts in retirement benefits. Dynegy's bankruptcy also left $17 million in unpaid property taxes in Orange County, New York. This created a budget crisis in the county which threatened to close local schools in Ulster County and create severe cutbacks in Orange County services. On December 10, 2012, Dynegy announced it would sell the Roseton plant to Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy for $19.5 million in cash. The sale closed on April 30, 2013.
The Danskammer plant sale was far more troubled. The plant was heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, rendering it inoperable. On December 10, Dynegy said that ICS NY Holdings would buy the plant for $3.5 million and demolish it. But the ICS sale stalled. Under the terms of the auction, ICS NY had to replace or find a substitute for its credit support agreement, and pay its portion of the plant's outstanding property taxes. But, Dynegy said, the company never did either. ICS defended itself, saying it was making every economically feasible effort to replace the credit agreement. On May 25, 2013, Dynegy filed suit with the bankruptcy court to force ICA to fulfill its obligations. The court imposed a July 31 deadline for ICS to close the sale, but it did not meet the deadline. Dynegy subsequently sought another buyer. Helios Power Capital, a private equity firm, agreed to purchase the plant for $3.5 million in cash on August 20. The court approved the sale on September 2.
Ameren purchase.
In mid-March 2013, Dynegy purchased three electric generating subsidiaries of Ameren, an Illinois power company. The deal, worth $900 million, involved Ameren's Ameren Energy Generating Co. (Genco); Genco's controlling interest in Electric Energy Inc.; AmerenEnergy Resources Generating Co.; and Ameren Energy Marketing Co. Dynegy formed a subsidiary, Illinois Power Holdings (IPH), to purchase the Ameren subsidiaries. No cash changed hands; rather, IPH agreed to assume $825 million in debt owed by Genco and the other subsidiaries. Ameren also transferred about $180 million in tax benefits the three subsidiaries would have received in 2015. Ameren retained Genco's inactive Hutsonville and Meredosia plants, and agreed to buy back from IPH for $133 million three natural gas electrical generating plants. Dynegy agreed to honor the union collective bargaining agreements in force at all plants. Under the deal, Dynegy acquired five coal-fired generating plants: Coffeen in Coffeen, Illinois; Duck Creek in Canton, Illinois; E.D. Edwards in Bartonville, Illinois; Joppa in Joppa, Illinois; and Newton in Newton, Illinois.
As the deal worked its way through state and federal regulatory approval, Dynegy took advantage of low interest rates and refinanced its debt. The company obtained $1.3 billion in term loan B facilities and $500 million in revolving credit. The company used this income to retire an $800 million, seven-year line of credit and a $500 million, two-year line of credit. Dynegy agreed that the revolving credit line would be paid off and terminate within five years. Two syndicated loans made up the $1.3 billion loan package. The $800 million loan and the $500 million loan were both due in 2020. This left Dynegy with $1.28 billion in lines of credit and $500 million in outstanding bonds.
The Ameren plants-for-debt swap also ran into trouble. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had to approve the deal and ensure that there was no negative impact on consumers from Dynegy's expanding market share in the Midwest. But on April 16, FERC said that the studies submitted by Dynegy and Ameren were inadequate, and it ordered the two firms to rerun the studies and report back to FERC by July 14. On July 16, FERC again declined to approve or disapprove the Dynegy-Ameren deal. The agency said that it Dynegy's study showed it charging market rates for energy in the Midwest. But FERC said it worried that transmission bottlenecks in the area would permit Dynegy to charge much more. Furthermore, federal regulators were considering an expansion in the market area IPH could serve. FERC asked Dynegy to provide additional information on transmission limitations and market area expansion. In August, the Sierra Club formally filed opposition to the Dynegy-Ameren deal. The environmental group said the transmission bottleneck issue gave Dynegy too much market power. It also argued that Dynegy and Ameren had submitted only regional market power data, and had not accounted for local impacts (which could be very severe).
Another obstacle emerged on June 6. Ameren was required to install pollution-reducing equipment on its five coal-fired generating plants in 2015. But because Ameren was in financial difficulty, it sought and received a waiver from the state of Illinois granting it a five-year delay. Ameren sought to transfer this delay to Dynegy, so that Dynegy would not have to immediately install the devices until 2020, either. But the Illinois Pollution Control Board denied Ameren's request. Dynegy filed its own request for a five-year waiver in July, and warned that the Ameren deal would fall apart if it did not receive the waiver. But the Sierra Club, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, and other environmental groups said Dynegy had the resources to install the equipment, and opposed a waiver. ACM Partners, a financial firm hired by the Sierra Club, also argued that Dynegy purposefully left IPH significantly underfunded and unable to tap into the parent company's resources. Dynegy disagreed, but the firm warned that if IPH went bankrupt, workers would lose pensions and local communities would have to pay for any environmental remediation. The Illinois AFL-CIO, however, supported Dynegy's request on September 16, saying that local jobs depended on the waiver. The pollution board said it would make a decision by November 2013. Foresight Energy, a major Illinois coal mining company, said it would install the $500 million anti-pollution devices for free if Dynegy agreed to sign a long-term contract to accept coal only from Foresight Energy. Dynegy declined the offer (in part because it already has long-term coal contracts), and environmental groups opposed it.
There was some speculation by financial analysts that the Dynegy-Ameren deal was a poor one. Julien Dumoulin-Smith, executive director of UBS Investment Research, said Dynegy is far more likely to shutter all five coal-powered plants rather than add pollution control devices. Dumoulin-Smith pointed out that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued final rules on sulfur dioxide emissions that go into effect in July 2018. Because the Edwards plant is in an area of low air quality, EPA is likely to force Dynegy to close the plant anyway. The remaining four plants are borderline cases with the exception of Duck Creek Station which spent nearly US$800m on sulfur dioxide removal, and may also be forced to close if EPA regulations tighten in the future (a highly likely possibility, he said).
2014 acquisitions.
On August 22, 2014, Dynegy announced a deal involving two interdependent transactions to be executed simultaneously. Dynegy acquired Duke’s Midwest Generation assets and retail business for $2.8 billion in cash, and the power generating assets of EquiPower Resources for $3.45 billion, with $3.35 billion in cash and $100 million in stock. This increased the company's generating capacity from 13000 MW to nearly 26000 MW.
Acquisition by Vistra.
On April 9, 2018 Vistra Energy closed its acquisition of Dynegy following a FERC determination that the $1.7 billion deal raised no competitive concerns.


Goldschmidt alternator

The Goldschmidt alternator or reflector alternator, invented in 1908 by German engineer Rudolph Goldschmidt, was a rotating machine which generated radio frequency alternating current and was used as a radio transmitter. Radio alternators like the Goldschmidt were some of the first continuous wave radio transmitters. Like the similar Alexanderson alternator, it was used briefly around World War I in a few high power longwave radio stations to transmit transoceanic radiotelegraphy traffic, until the 1920s when it was made obsolete by vacuum tube transmitters.
Description.
Although the device was a radio transmitter, it resembled an electric generator used to produce electric power in a power plant. Like other generators it consisted of a rotor, several feet in diameter, wound with coils of wire, which rotated inside a stationary frame called a stator which had its own coils. The interaction between the magnetic fields of the rotor and stator produced radio frequency currents in the stator windings, which were applied to the antenna.
A radio frequency alternator differed from an ordinary electric generator in that to produce radio frequency current it rotated much faster, and had many more magnetic "poles" on the rotor and stator, usually 300 to 600. The Goldschmidt alternator was turned by a powerful DC electric motor attached to the shaft, through a geartrain which increased the motor's speed to several thousand RPM. The advantage of the Goldschmidt design was that by using external "reflector" capacitor banks that caused the output frequency to be a multiple (harmonic) of the alternator's rotation speed, it allowed the rotation speed to be kept lower, simplifying the mechanical design. Goldschmidt transmitters operated at longwave (LF and VLF) frequencies of about 20 to 100 kHz.
Goldschmidt machines were used from 1910 to about 1930 as the transmitters in a few central "superpower" longwave radio stations, which were employed not for broadcasting but for "wireless telegraphy", to transmit telegraph messages in Morse code to similar stations in other nations all over the world. Only alternator transmitters like the Goldschmidt and Alexanderson could produce the high powers (50 to 200 kW) necessary to communicate reliably at transoceanic distances. The Goldschmidt was a less widely used design, mostly used in European stations. The stations themselves resembled a utility powerhouse, with large electric motors turning the humming alternators, which were connected through huge loading coils to enormous wire antenna systems stretching for miles, suspended on steel towers.
History.
Radio alternators.
Around 1900 it was realized that the existing technology for generating radio waves, the spark-gap transmitter, was inadequate because it generated damped waves. Efforts were made to design a transmitter that would generate sinusoidal "continuous waves", because they could be received at a longer range, and also could be modulated to transmit audio (sound) in addition to Morse code. In 1891 Frederick Trouton pointed out that if an AC generator (alternator), which produces alternating current, could be built to run fast enough, with enough magnetic poles on its armature, it would generate alternating current in the radio frequency range. If P is the number of pole pairs and U is the rotational speed in revolutions per second, the frequency f in hertz of the current produced by an alternator is
A number of researchers beginning with Elihu Thomson and Nikola Tesla had tried building radio alternators, but they had been unable to produce frequencies above 15 kHz due to the engineering problems of building a machine with many poles that would rotate fast enough. In 1906 Reginald Fessenden and Ernst Alexanderson at General Electric began to solve the problems and build alternators which could produce frequencies in the radio range, above 20 kHz. However the Alexanderson alternator ran at extremely high speeds; to reach 100 kHz with a 300 pole rotor required a rotor speed of 20,000 RPM, which was at the limit of the engineering ability of the time. It was 1916 before Alexanderson machines achieved the high power needed for transatlantic communication, and they were extremely complex and expensive.
Goldschmidt's machine.
In 1908 Westinghouse engineer Rudolph Goldschmidt devised an intricate method to enable an alternator to generate high frequency without requiring excessive speeds. His technique was to exploit resonance and the nonlinear saturation characteristic of the iron rotor to use the alternator as a frequency multiplier as well as a generator. By attaching tuned circuits called "reflector" circuits to the stator and rotor windings, Goldschmidt found that an alternator could be made to produce output power at a multiple (harmonic) of its fundamental rotational frequency PU. The output frequency of the Goldschmidt alternator was
where N was a small integer, the harmonic number. N was limited to 4 in most practical machines, as losses due to leakage flux increased rapidly with increasing N. Thus a 100 kHz Goldschmidt machine with P = 300 poles would require a rotor speed of only U = 5000 RPM, one-fourth that of an equivalent Alexanderson machine. 80% efficiency could be achieved, but in order to keep the leakage flux low enough to achieve this the machine required a very narrow clearance of 0.8 mm between the stator and rotor, which could weigh 5 tons and be moving at a peripheral speed of 200 meters per second. Another challenge was that to reduce hysteresis losses in the iron rotor at radio frequencies, it had to be made of very thin foil laminations, .05 mm (.002 in) thick, separated by paper sheets, so the rotor was more than 1/3 paper. No rotor of this construction had ever been used in a large machine. The limit of output frequency for Goldschmidt alternators, as well as other alternator technologies, was about 200 kHz. The mechanical problems ultimately limited the use of Goldschmidt machines.
Use.
The machine was developed and manufactured by the German company Hochfrequenz-Maschinen Aktiengesellschaft für Drahtlose Telegraphie ("Homag") and was mostly used in Europe. The Goldschmidt machine, like the Alexanderson and other alternator transmitters, was used mainly for high power longwave stations that transmitted radiotelegraphy messages, both commercial stations that handled private traffic, and naval stations that kept governments in touch with their colonies and naval fleets. The first Goldschmidt machine in the UK, a 12 kW, 60 kHz transmitter was installed at Stough in 1912. A 100 kW, 400 pole unit "(top of page)" was put into operation at Eilvese, Neustadt-am-Ruebenberger, Germany, and the first machine in the USA was a similar 120 kW, 400 pole, 40.5 kHz unit at Tuckerton, New Jersey. The Eilvese machine was Germany's main communication channel with the world during World War I, and was used by Kaiser Wilhelm II and US President Woodrow Wilson to negotiate the Armistice that ended the war.
The heyday of the big alternator radio transmitters was around 1918. World War I had brought home to nations the strategic importance of radio communication, as without it they could easily be isolated by enemies cutting their submarine telegraph cables. This precipitated a postwar building boom of large transcontinental alternator radio stations. However these expensive behemoths were obsolete even as they were installed. The invention of the triode vacuum tube in 1906 by Lee De Forest, and the feedback oscillator circuit in 1912 by Edwin Armstrong and Alexander Meissner, made possible smaller and cheaper vacuum tube transmitters which by the end of World War 1 could produce as much radio power as the alternators. By 1921 the Marconi Co. had installed 100 kW vacuum tube transmitters for transatlantic message traffic at its stations at Carnarvon, Wales and Glace Bay, Newfoundland. Due to their huge capital costs, legacy alternator transmitters remained in use through the 1930s and were used in World War 2 to communicate with submarines. It is not known when the last Goldschmidt machine was retired.
Other radio alternators.
The Goldschmidt alternator was one of several types of rotating "radio frequency alternator" machines used as radio transmitters during the first two decades of the 20th century.
 Alternator transmitters produced a "cleaner" signal with less harmonics than their main competitor, the Poulsen arc transmitter so they were used in the highest power telegraphy stations. The machines differed in how they solved the fundamental problem of producing high frequencies without exceeding the mechanical capabilities of rotating machines:


Jessica Lovering

Jessica Lovering is an American astrophysicist, researcher and Director of Energy at the Breakthrough Institute. She supports the innovative development of new nuclear power plants in response to climate change. She also sits on the Advisory Committee of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, and was a speaker at Nuclear Innovation Bootcamp at the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. Her biography at ClimateOne states that Lovering "works to change how people think about energy and the environment". Her written work has featured in various publications, including journals "Issues in Science and Technology", "Science and Public Policy", "Foreign Affairs" and "Energy policy." Websites featuring her work include various nuclear energy blogs and EnergyPost.eu. She has worked as a researcher on the documentary film "Pandora's Promise" and appeared in the TV series "Abandoned".


Klaus Traube

Klaus Traube (25 February 1928 – 4 September 2016) was a German engineer and former manager in the German nuclear power industry and one of its leading opponents. He was the victim of an illegal eavesdropping operation by the BfV (the German secret service), because he was falsely suspected of passing on secret information to people sympathizing with terrorism, notably the Red Army Faction.
Biography.
Traube was born in Hanover, the son of a social democrat Jewish dentist. In 1936 his father committed suicide—he could no longer bear the terror of the National Socialists. Because of his Jewish background, Klaus had to leave the Gymnasium he attended. Towards the end of World War II, at the age of 17, he was briefly put into an Arbeitslager (labor camp).
After the war, despite his bad experiences, Traube stayed in Germany and studied mechanical engineering ("Maschinenbau") and romance studies.
Traube started work at the German AEG, where he quickly rose to become director of the department for nuclear power. He then lived abroad for some time (he worked for General Dynamics in San Diego). Traube returned to Germany and became head of Interatom, a component company of the Kraftwerk Union, which was part of the Siemens conglomerate. Among other things he was responsible for the development of the German fast breeder-project in Kalkar.
Traube was originally a proponent of nuclear power, but the report of the Club of Rome, "The Limits to Growth", in 1972 made him slowly change his view. As a result, he had contacts with the student movement in Germany, which at that time was slowly becoming more militant. He was also alleged to have contacts with sympathisers of the Red Army Fraction. The BfV therefore started to monitor him intensively. He was suspected of passing secret information to people sympathising with terrorism. In a covert operation called "Operation Müll" ("operation rubbish"), the BND in 1975 planted a number of wiretaps in Traube's apartment. They also later informed his employer who, as a result, fired him. This illegal operation was uncovered in 1977 by the newspaper "Der Spiegel" and led to the dismissal of the then minister of the interior Werner Maihofer one year later. Traube was cleared of all charges. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 finally transformed him into an open opponent of nuclear power.
Since then, he had been one of the most prominent and influential critics of nuclear power. Traube did not believe that the operation of nuclear-power plants was economically feasible or that it was possible to overcome the security risks. Also the construction of fast breeders, essential in the long-term use of nuclear power, was in his view too difficult to be realistic. He was a strong supporter of renewable energy. During the 1980s Traube achieved iconic status among Germans opposed to nuclear power. From 1990 to 1997, he was Director of the Institute for Energy-economics and Energy-politics at the University of Bremen.
Klaus Traube died on 4 September aged 88 in the city of Oberursel, where he used to live.


6L6

6L6 is the designator for a vacuum tube introduced by Radio Corporation of America in July 1936. At the time Philips had already developed and patented power pentode designs, which were rapidly replacing power triodes due to their greater efficiency. The beam tetrode design of the 6L6 allowed RCA to circumvent Philips' pentode patent.
History.
The 6L6 is a 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 have been 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 and also acted like a suppressor grid to redirect 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" (negative resistance) in the lower parts of the tetrode's voltage-current characteristic curves, which sometimes caused tetrode amplifiers to become unstable, MOV (Marconi-Osram Valve, a subsidiary of EMI jointly owned with General Electric Company Ltd) marketed this tube family under the sobriquet "KT", meaning "kinkless tetrode".
Because MOV's engineers did not feel the kinkless tetrode could be successfully mass-produced, they licensed the design to RCA. This proved to be a poor business decision on MOV's part. RCA subsequently had enormous success with the 6L6. It replaced the use of power triodes in public-address amplifiers almost overnight. So many applications were found for the 6L6 that a complete list would be impossible to assemble. MOV introduced their version, the KT66, a year later.
RCA's first version was an early octal base tube. Like most with this base it had a metal, rather than glass, envelope. Later versions, including the 6L6G, 6L6GA, 6L6GB, 5881, 5932, 7027, and the final version 6L6GC had glass envelopes, which made radiation cooling of the anode easier. The voltage and power rating of the 6L6 series were gradually pushed upwards by adding features such as a Micanol base, thicker plates, thicker grid wires, grid cooling fins, and special ultra-black plate coatings. The original metal version was rated for 19 watts dissipation while the later 6L6GC is usually rated for 30 watts. A "W" in the descriptor, as in 6L6WGB, identifies the tube as designed for mechanically rugged environments, such as military or airborne use.
Variations.
Early variations included transmitting tubes such as the 807 (1937) with 6.3V heater, plate (anode) connected to a top cap, and equivalent 12.6V 1625, the smaller 6V6 (1936), the many KT versions marketed in Europe, and a subsequent vast array of audio and RF power tubes. One of the largest-volume post-WWII applications was in the basic design of television sweep power tubes, starting with the 6BG6G (1946), a modified 807. TV designs rarely used transistors in place of sweep tubes—a challenging high-power and high-speed application—until the 1970s.
The 807 was preferred to the similar 6L6 by amateur radio enthusiasts because high transient voltages on the 6L6's anode when operating in class C could cause a flashover between pins 2 and 3 on the octal base, whereas this was not a problem with the top-cap anode of the otherwise identical 807, physically distant from all the base pins.
In guitar amplifiers, this flashover problem sometimes occurs if the amplifier is operated without the speakers connected, causing the self inductance of the output transformer primary winding to generate high voltages when the current changes due to the applied signal. For this reason the speaker terminals of 6L6 tube amplifiers are sometimes short-circuited by a switching 6.3 mm jack when the speakers are disconnected.
Further testimony for this device's success would be even simpler: the 6L6GC version was still being manufactured and used, primarily in guitar amplifiers. Manufacture continued in Russia (two factories), China (two factories), and Slovakia. (In 2006, Ei Electronics in Serbia discontinued making tubes.) The 6L6 has had one of the longest active lifetimes of any electronic component, more than 70 years.


Waitaha River

The Waitaha River, also known as the Mt Cook of rivers, is a river of the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island. One of the best whitewater rivers in New Zealand (if not the best), the hydroelectricity project has been rejected by the Nz Govt
Waitaha is Māori and it literally means "wai" a river or stream "taha" to be passed on one side. It was named by the Waitaha, an early South Island iwi (tribe or nation) who named a number of South Island places. It flows northwest from the Bloomfield Range of the Southern Alps, some north of Mount Whitcombe, and reaches the Tasman Sea southwest of Ross. Near the coast, it is crossed by , and just downstream from the bridge, the Kakapotahi River or Little Waitaha River flows into the Waitaha River.
The Waitaha River is renowned for gold, both alluvial and from glacial deposition. Coarse gold has been dredged downstream of Morgans Gorge where the river opens into the flats. Several gold mining operations continue in the area today.
The Morgan Gorge that is part of the Waitaha River is one of the best and most challenging whitewater kayaking places in New Zealand, and the "Mt Cook of rivers" nickname results from this. There is a proposal by Westpower Ltd to dam the river for power generation. The project is supported by the Mayor of Westland, Bruce Smith. It is opposed by the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, Whitewater NZ (the group representing the interests of kayakers and canoeists), and the Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC). The land alongside the middle and upper reaches of the river is conservation land administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and has "stewardship status", with puts its protection level below that of a national park. DOC has given approval in principle for a 1.5 km water race to be built as a tunnel, and will make a final decision after public hearings finished in December 2016.


Diving air compressor

A diving air compressor is a gas compressor that can provide breathing air directly to a surface-supplied diver, or fill diving cylinders with high-pressure air pure enough to be used as a breathing gas.
A low pressure diving air compressor usually has a delivery pressure of up to 30 bar, which is regulated to suit the depth of the dive.
A high pressure diving compressor has a delivery pressure which is usually over 150 bar, and is commonly between 200 and 300 bar. The pressure is limited by an overpressure valve which may be adjustable.
Machinery.
High pressure diving compressors are generally three- or four-stage-reciprocating air compressors that are lubricated with a high-grade mineral or synthetic compressor oil free of toxic additives (a few use ceramic-lined cylinders with O-rings, not piston rings, requiring no lubrication). Oil-lubricated compressors must only use lubricants specified by the compressor's manufacturer as suitable for use with breathing air. Special filters are used to clean the air of most residual oil and water (see "Air purity").
Smaller compressors are often splash lubricated - the oil is splashed around in the crankcase by the impact of the crankshaft and connecting rods - but larger compressors are likely to have pressurized lubrication using an oil pump which supplies the oil to critical areas through pipes and passages in the castings. Most oil lubricated compressors will have a wet sump at the bottom of the crankcase, and require the oil level to be within limits indicated by a sight glass or dipstick for proper lubrication. The compressor should also be level within the manufacturer's specification while operating. These constraints ensure that the lubricant is in the right place for either the moving parts to contact it for splash lubrication, or for reliable suction to the oil pump. Failure to comply with these specifications can lead to damage to the compressor due to excessive friction and overheating, and contamination of the breathing air by toxic breakdown products of the lubricants.
The compression process helps remove water from the gas, making it dry, which is good for reducing corrosion in diving cylinders and freezing of diving regulators, but contributes towards dehydration, a factor in decompression sickness, in divers who breathe the gas.
Low pressure diving compressors are usually single stage compressors as the delivery pressure is relatively low.
Air purity.
The compressed air output by the compressor must be filtered to make it fit for use as a breathing gas. Periodically, the air produced by a compressor must be tested to ensure it meets air purity standards. Frequency of testing, contaminants that must be analysed, and the allowable limits vary between applications and jurisdictions. The following impurities may be checked for:
Filtration.
Filters remove:
Low pressure filtration.
The intake air for a high pressure compressor should be clean and have a low carbon dioxide content. Removal of particulate contamination is usually by a paper type dust filter at the first stage intake. Carbon dioxide can be removed by a scrubber if necessary. Clean fresh air does not need to be scrubbed at present, but inner city air may have an excessively high carbon dioxide content, and standard atmospheric air carbon dioxide content is slowly increasing. Carbon dioxide scrubbing requires moisture for the absorbent material to work effectively, and moist air is undesirable for the other filter media, so carbon dioxide scrubbing is often removed by a pre-filter system before the air is compressed.
High pressure filtration systems.
When the air is compressed, the partial pressure of water vapour is proportionately increased. The air is also heated by compression, and when cooled between stages in the inter-cooler coils, the relative humidity increases, and when it exceeds 100% will tend to condense out onto the surface of the tubes and as droplets carried by the air-stream. The air from the inter-cooler coils is led into the large diameter vertical axis tube of a separator, where it changes direction by about 90 degrees and is slowed down considerably. When the airflow changes direction towards the outlet at the top of the separator casing, the denser droplets have a tendency to hit the walls and coalesce into a film, which will flow downwards to the bottom of the separator and collect there where it can be periodically discharged through a drain valve. This reduces the water content of the outlet air, which is then compressed again in the next stage cylinder, cooled again, and the water that condenses out is again removed by the next separator.
After final stage separation the relatively dry air passes through the filter to remove yet more water, and any other contaminants that the filter media will adsorb. The efficiency of dehumidification and filtration depends on significant compression and limited flow velocity, which requires back-pressure at the final stage outlet to resist flow when the filling pressure is low. The back-pressure valve provided in the outlet from the final filter stack affects how effectively the filter works.
The final stage of air treatment is filtration of residual moisture, oil and hydrocarbons, and where necessary catalytic conversion of carbon monoxide. All of these depend on sufficient time in contact with the filter media, known as "dwell time", so either the filter must have a long air path or the air must flow slowly. Slow air flow is easily achieved by high compression, so filtration works best at or near the working output pressure of the compressor, and this is achieved by the back-pressure valve, which only allows air to flow above the set pressure.
The filter system comprises one or more pressure vessels known as filter towers with either prepacked cartridge or loose filter media, a back pressure valve, one or more pressure gauges, and a coalescing separator. After passing through the final intercooler coil the compressed air passes through separators to mechanically remove condensed water and oil droplets, after which other contaminants re removed in the filters by chemical bonding, absorption and catalysis. The first filter medium is desiccant, as water contamination can reduce the effectiveness of some of the other media. Next is the carbon monoxide converting catalyst (if used), then activated carbon, and finally a particulate filter, which will also catch dust from the filter media. The ratio of desiccant to activated carbon will be somewhere around 70/30.
The ability to remove impurities from the air passing through the filtration media is largely dependent on how long the air remains in contact with the media while passing through the filter stack, known as dwell time. A longer dwell time in the filter is an effective way of increasing contact time, and this is proportional to the pressure of the air in the filter housing. By using a back pressure valve the air always takes approximately the same time to pass through the filter and filtration is consistent (assuming a consistent operating speed). The back-pressure valve is usually set to near the working pressure of the compressor to ensure that the air is compressed sufficiently for the filters to work effectively.
Delivered air should have a dew point lower than the operational temperature of the cylinder, which is generally above 0°C when immersed, but can be colder during transport. Air temperature is also decreased during expansion through the regulator when in use, and when this temperature is low enough for the condensate to freeze, it can lock up the moving parts of the regulator and cause a free flow, known as internal icing. Correct back-pressure also provides relatively even loading of the compressor stages, which reduces vibration caused by imbalance, and extends the compressor service life.
The activated carbon filter medium works best when dry, so it is usually loaded into the filter stack so that the air will first flow through the desiccant media, commonly molecular sieve. Hopcalite catalyst will convert carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide, but requires very dry air—relative humidity must be below 50 per cent—so hopcalite is loaded downstream from the desiccant. A carbon dioxide absorbent may be loaded downstream of the hopcalite.
Filtration media.
Desiccants are intended to absorb water vapour. Desiccant media used in HP breathing air filters include: activated alumina, silica gel, sorbead, and molecular sieve. Some grades of molecular sieve can absorb up to 23% of its own weight in water, can produce dew points of , and have additional capacities for absorbing hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, and other organics, and function at up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Manganese dioxide based catalysts (Monoxycon and Hopcalite 300) is used to oxidize carbon monoxide into much less toxic carbon dioxide. This is important if there is a risk of carbon monoxide contamination as it is highly toxic. The air entering the catalyst layer must be dry (dew point of around –50 degrees), as moisture neutralizes the catalyst. After the catalyst, an absorbent can be used to remove the CO2.
Activated carbon absorbs both condensable and gaseous hydrocarbons, and is effective in removing odours, organic compounds, and halogenated solvents.
Compressor balance and the backpressure valve.
The last part of the compressor gas circuit is the back-pressure valve. This is a spring-loaded valve that opens to allow flow of air only after the pressure reaches the set pressure. It is usually set to a pressure close to the working pressure of the compressor, and has two basic functions.
Firstly it ensures that after a short starting period, all of the compressor stages are operating at their designed discharge pressures, so that the loads on the pistons are steady and evenly distributed round the crankshaft. This is the loading at which the compressor is balanced at the designed running speed. When the pressure in any cylinder is different to the nominal pressure, the loads will be unbalanced and the compressor will vibrate more than when balanced, and the shaft bearings will be more severely loaded and will wear faster. During start-up the compressor first builds up pressure on the first stage, and is unbalanced, with a greater load on that cylinder's piston, and will vibrate more than normal, as there is no equivalent load on the other stage pistons, then pressure in the other stages builds up in sequence, until all cylinders are operating at their working pressures, the loads on all the pistons are similar, and the back-pressure valve starts to open to let the compressed gas flow to the distribution panel.
Pressure.
Diving compressors generally fall into one of two categories: those used for surface-supplied diving and those used for filling scuba diving cylinders and surface-supply storage cylinders.
Surface-supplied diving compressors are low-pressure and high-volume. They supply breathing air directly to a diver, through a gas control panel sometimes called a "rack" via a hose which is usually part of a group of hoses and cables called an "umbilical". Their output is generally between . These compressors must be sufficiently powerful to deliver gas at a sufficient pressure and volume for multiple divers working at depths of up to about .
Compressors used to fill scuba cylinders have a high delivery pressure and may have a low delivery volume. They are used to fill diving cylinders and storage cylinders or banks of storage cylinders. These compressors may be smaller and less powerful because the volume of gas they deliver is not so critical as it is not directly used by the diver; a lower volume compressor can be used to fill large storage cylinders during the periods when demand is low. This stored compressed air can be decanted into diving cylinders when needed. Common scuba diving cylinder pressures are 200 bar (2940 psi), 3000 psi (207 bar), 232 bar (3400 psi) and 300 bar (4500 psi).
Heat of compression.
When diving cylinders are filled the gas inside them warms as a result of adiabatic heating. When the gas cools by losing heat to the surroundings, the pressure will drop as described by the general gas equation and Gay-Lussac's law. Divers, to maximise their dive time, generally want their cylinders filled to their safe capacity, the working pressure. To provide the diver with a cylinder filled to the working pressure at the nominal temperature of 15 or 20 °C, the cylinder and gas must be kept cool when filling or filled to a pressure such that when it cools it is at the working pressure. This is known as the developed pressure for the filling temperature. Health and safety regulations and pressure vessel design standards may limit the working temperature of the cylinder, commonly to 65 °C, in which case the cylinder must be filled slowly enough to avoid exceeding the maximum working temperature.
Cylinders are often filled at a rate of less than 1 bar (100 kPa or 15 lbf/in²) per second to allow time for heat transfer to the surroundings to limit this increase in temperature. As a method to remove heat faster when filling the cylinder, some filling stations “wet fill” cylinders immersed in a bath of cold water. There is an increased risk of internal cylinder corrosion caused by moisture from the wet environment entering the cylinder due to contamination during connection of the filling hose during wet filling.
The bank.
Compressors may be connected to a bank of large, high-pressure cylinders to store compressed gas, for use at peak times. This allows a cheaper low-powered compressor, which is relatively slow at pumping gas, to fill the bank automatically during idle periods, storing a large volume of pressurized air so that a batch of cylinders can be filled more quickly at peak demand without being delayed by the slow-running compressor. In surface-supplied diving, high-pressure cylinder banks may be used as an emergency backup in case of primary compressor failure, or they may be used as the primary source of breathing gas, a system also known as "Scuba replacement".
Gas blending.
Compressors may be linked to a gas blending panel to make nitrox, trimix, heliair or heliox mixes. The panel controls the decanting of oxygen and helium from cylinders bought from commercial gas suppliers.
As it is not possible to decant to a diving cylinder from a storage cylinder that holds gas at a lower pressure than the diving cylinder, the expensive gas in low pressure storage cylinders is not easily consumed and may go to waste when the storage cylinder is returned to the supplier. The cascade system may be used with a bank of storage cylinders to economically consume these high cost gases so that the economically maximum gas is used from the bank. This involves filling a diving cylinder by first decanting from the bank cylinder with the lowest pressure that is higher than the diving cylinder's pressure and then from the next higher-pressure bank cylinder in succession until the diving cylinder is full. The system maximizes the use of low-pressure bank gas and minimizes the use of high-pressure bank gas.
Another method for scavenging expensive low pressure gases is to pump it with a gas booster pump such as a Haskel pump, or to add it to the intake air of a suitable compressor at atmospheric pressure in a mixer known as a blending stick.
Operation.
A diving air compressor operator may be required to be formally certified as competent to operate a diving air compressor and to fill high pressure cylinders. In other jurisdictions the operator may be required to be competent to use the equipment and externally examine cylinders for compliance, but there may be no formal licence or registration required. In yet other jurisdictions there may be no control at all. National and/or state occupational health and safety legislation will usually apply.


QX Metals

QX Metals Corp. (previously known as Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp. and previously Alternative Earth Resources Inc.) is a Canadian multinational corporation that is active exploring a porphyry copper-gold deposit in the Bulgarian Rhodope Mountains. The company was first incorporated on April 13, 1995, and most recently changed its name from Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp. to QX Metals Corp. in February 2019. The Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp. was created following the merger of the Alternative Earth Resources Inc. with Black Sea Copper & Gold Corp. in 2016. Alternative Earth Resources Inc. itself was created on April 2, 2013 from Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. The company had focused on producing geothermal electric power from high temperature geothermal resources in the United States. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the company had up to six geothermal projects in the Western United States. Despite federal government loan guarantees, the company faced financial trouble and there was "significant doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern".
Projects.
The company owns a 100% leasehold interest in six properties: Blue Mountain, Pumpernickel, Edna Mountain, and Black Warrior (located in Nevada), New Truckhaven (in California), and Crump Geyser in Oregon. The projects have a production potential of over 200 MW, enough green energy to power approximately 200,000 homes.
The company's Blue Mountain 'Faulkner 1' 49.5 MW gross geothermal power project started producing commercially in November 2009. But its actual production was only 35 MW.


Hydroelectricity in Canada

According to the International Hydropower Association, Canada is the world's fourth largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world in 2020 after the United States, Brazil, and China. In 2014, Canada consumed the equivalent of 85.7 megatonnes worth of oil of hydroelectricity, 9.8% of worldwide hydroelectric consumption. Furthermore, hydroelectricity accounted for 25.7% of Canada's total energy consumption (37.3% of non-oil sources). It is the third-most consumed energy in Canada behind oil and natural gas (30.9% and 28.1% of total consumption, respectively).
Some provinces and territories, such as British Columbia, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec and Yukon produce over 90% of their electricity from Hydro. All of the dams with large reservoirs were completed before 1990, since then most development has been run-of-the-river, both large and small. Natural Resources Canada calculates the current installed small hydro capacity is 3,400 MW, with an estimated potential of 15,000 MW. A report on the future of hydroelectricity, suggests the remaining 78% potential will remain undeveloped up to 2050, citing a lack of public acceptance. The widespread usage of hydroelectricity, including being incorporated into electric utility names such as Toronto Hydro or BC Hydro, has led to "hydro" being used in some parts of Canada to refer to electricity in general, regardless of source.
As of 2019, Canada had 81 GW of installed hydroelectric capacity, producing about 400 TWh of electricity.
By region.
British Columbia.
BC Hydro owns and operates the majority of hydroelectric installations in British Columbia. A second crown corporation, Columbia Power Corporation and two companies also own large dams in BC, Alcan's Kemano Project and FortisBC.
90% of BC Hydro's generation is produced by hydroelectric means. Natural gas and biomass thermal power round out the generation portfolio.
Over 80% of BC Hydro's installed in generating capacity is at hydroelectric installations in the Peace and Columbia river basins. The GM Shrum and Peace Canyon generating stations are on the Peace River produced 29% of BC Hydro's electricity requirements. In the Columbia River Basin, Mica and Revelstoke hydroelectric plants together contributed 25%, while Kootenay Canal and Seven Mile generating stations together supplied 10%.
The remaining 25 hydroelectric generating stations supplied 14% of electricity production. BC Hydro also operates thermal power plants. The Burrard Thermal Generating Station contributes 7.5% and the remaining 14.5% of the electricity requirement was supplied by purchases and other transactions.
BC Hydro's last dam was completed in 1984, since then run-of-the-river projects with private partners have been built. Power production without reservoirs varies dramatically through the year, so older dams with large reservoirs, retain water and average out capacity. As of 2012, there were approximately 40 small hydro sites generating 750 MW. By 2014 various companies have built a total of 100 run of the river projects under 50 MW. In 2014 they produced 18,000 GWh from 4,500 MW of capacity.
Manitoba Hydro.
As of March 31, 2018, Manitoba Hydro serves a peak Manitoba electrical load of 5,648 megawatts. Electrical supply to Manitoba customers was 22.5 terawatt-hours in fiscal 2017, with total revenue due to electricity of $1.464 billion CAD. Extraprovincial sales totaled $437 million in 2017-18 and were at 9.448 terawatt-hours, with normal water flows. The company also delivered 2.048 billion cubic metres of natural gas in 2017–18, which contributed $346 million CAD to revenues. As of early 2020, around 97% of the electricity generation in Manitoba comes from hydroelectricity.
Newfoundland and Labrador.
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro's installed generating capacity, 7775 megawatts (MW), 92 percent hydroelectric, is the third largest of all utility companies in Canada.
Northwest Territories.
The Northwest Territories has an installed hydroelectric generating capacity of 55 MW, supplying electricity to the North Slave and South Slave electricity grids. Each grid operates independently and is not connected to the electrical grid in the rest of Canada.
Ontario.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) Produces 50% of the electricity used in the province, 40% from hydroelectric, 10% from nuclear-powered facilities, 30% from solar, and 20% from biomass. OPG uses thermal plants that burn biomass and natural gas with a generating capacity of 2,458 MW; these plants were not used in 2015.
After a provincial government commitment to phase out all coal generating plants, two units at Nanticoke were shut down in fall 2010. Another two were shut down in 2011. The final four were shut down on December 31, 2013.
Quebec.
Hydro-Québec's extensive network of 61 hydroelectric dams have a combined capacity of 38,400 megawatts, accounting for over half of the Canadian total. Hydropower accounts for 95.73% of the supply sold by the Quebec Crown-owned utility. Five of Hydro-Québec's hydroelectric facilities are rated above 2,000 MW — the Manic-5, La Grande-4, La Grande-3 La Grande-2-A and Robert-Bourassa stations — while 7 others have a capacity of over 1,000 megawatts.
New projects.
The Lower Churchill Project is a planned hydroelectric project in Labrador and includes the Muskrat Falls Generation Facility with a total generating capacity of 824 MW in 2021. The proposed Gull Island facility would consist of a generation station with a capacity of 2,250 MW after 2023.
Romaine River project in Quebec started construction in 2009 and will have a capacity of 1550 MW by 2020.
Site C dam on the Peace River in British Columbia will have a capacity of 1100 MW in 2024.
Keeyask on the Nelson River, Manitoba is under construction and expecting completion of a 695 MW station in 2021.


Consolidated Edison

Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $48 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through its subsidiaries:
In 2015, electric revenues accounted for 70.35% of consolidated sales (70.55% in 2014); gas revenues 13.61% (14.96% in 2014); steam revenues 5.01% (4.86% in 2014); and non-utility revenues of 11.02% (9.63 in 2014%).
History.
In 1823, Con Edison's earliest corporate predecessor, the New York Gas Light Company, was founded by a consortium of New York City investors. A year later, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Due to the Board of Aldermen's authority to grant franchises in the City of New York in the early to mid 1800s, interaction with Tammany Hall was required to expand business. By William M. Tweed's reign in the late 1860s as the Boss of Tammany Hall, the power to authorize franchises lay with the County Board of Supervisors, of which Tweed had been a member. By 1871, Tweed was a member of the board of the Harlem Gas Light Company, a precursor to the Consolidated Edison Company. In 1884, six gas companies combined into the Consolidated Gas Company.
The New York Steam Company began providing service in lower Manhattan in 1882. Today, Con Edison operates the largest commercial steam system in the world, providing steam service to nearly 1,600 commercial and residential establishments in Manhattan from Battery Park to 96th Street.
Con Edison's electric business also dates back to 1882, when Thomas Edison’s Edison Illuminating Company of New York began supplying electricity to 59 customers in a square-mile area in lower Manhattan. After the "war of currents", there were more than 30 companies generating and distributing electricity in New York City and Westchester County. But by 1920 there were far fewer, and the New York Edison Company (then part of Consolidated Gas) was clearly the leader.
In 1936, with electric sales far outstripping gas sales, the company incorporated and the name was changed to Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. The years that followed brought further amalgamations as Consolidated Edison acquired or merged with more than a dozen companies between 1936 and 1960. Con Edison today is the result of acquisitions, dissolutions and mergers of more than 170 individual electric, gas and steam companies.
Consolidated Edison acquired land on the Hudson River in Buchanan, NY, in 1954 for the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The first reactor (Indian Point 1) began generating power on September 16, 1962. The reactor was shut down on October 31, 1974, because the emergency core cooling system did not meet regulatory requirements. The company built two more reactors at Indian Point during the 1970s: Indian Point 2 and 3. Indian Point 3 was sold to the New York Power Authority in 1975. Entergy acquired Indian Point 2 in November 2000, nine months after a steam generator leak. With the sale of Indian Point 2, the last power plant it owned, Consolidated Edison, Inc. became primarily an energy distributor.
On January 1, 1998, following the deregulation of the utility industry in New York state, a holding company, Consolidated Edison, Inc., was formed. It is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with approximately $13 billion in annual revenues and $47 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through two regulated utility subsidiaries and three competitive energy businesses. Under a number of corporate names, the company has been traded on the NYSE without interruption since 1824—longer than any other NYSE stock. Its largest subsidiary, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. provides electric, gas and steam service to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York, an area of with a population of nearly 9 million. Also in 1998, Consolidated Edison, Inc. acquired Orange & Rockland Utilities, which is operated separately.
Systems.
Clean energy.
To date, Con Edison has invested $3 billion in solar and wind projects. In September 2017 it was announced that the company would invest $1.25 billion in “renewable energy production facilities over the next three years.”
The company's “renewable portfolio” contains more than 1.5 gigawatts of operating capacity. Seventy-five percent of that capacity comes from solar energy. Clean energy accounts for around eight percent of the company's earnings, as of fall 2017.
To support electric vehicles, Con Edison partnered with the company FleetCarma to provide $500 in rewards to owners of electric vehicles in New York City and Westchester County, New York. Through this program, Con Edison pays customers to charge their vehicles when energy demand is low.
Electrical.
The Con Edison electrical transmission system utilizes voltages of 138 kilovolts (kV), 345 kV, and 500 kV. The company has two 345 kV interconnections with upstate New York that enable it to import power from Hydro-Québec in Canada and one 345 kV interconnection each with Public Service Electric and Gas in New Jersey and Long Island.
Con Edison is also interconnected with Public Service Electric and Gas via the Branchburg-Ramapo 500 kV line. Con Ed's distribution voltages are 33 kV, 27 kV, 13 kV, and 4 kV.
The of underground cable in the Con Edison system could wrap around the Earth 3.6 times. Nearly of overhead electric wires complement the underground system—enough cable to stretch between New York and Los Angeles 13 times.
Gas.
The Con Edison gas system has nearly of pipes—if laid end to end, long enough to reach Paris and back to New York City, and serves Westchester County, the Bronx, Manhattan and parts of Queens. Gas service in Brooklyn, Staten Island and the rest of Queens is provided by National Grid USA's New York City operations, with the exception of the Rockaway peninsula, which is serviced by National Grid's Long Island operations. The average volume of gas that travels through Con Edison's gas system annually could fill the Empire State Building nearly 6,100 times.
Steam.
Con Edison produces 30 billion pounds of steam each year through its seven power plants which boil water to before distributing it to hundreds of buildings in the New York City steam system, which is the biggest district steam system in the world. Steam traveling through the system is used to heat and cool some of New York's most famous addresses, including the United Nations complex, the Empire State Building, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Programs and resources.
ConEd offers a variety of programs and resources for its customers and stakeholders, organized in such categories as, "For Renters", "For Residential Owners", "For Small & Medium Businesses", "For Commercial & Industrial", "Business Partners", "Investors", "Community Affairs", and "Municipalities". Examples of such resources include:
Community partnerships.
Con Edison contributes substantial funding and volunteer hours to many non-profit organizations and learning centers including New York Botanical Garden, Hudson Valley Groundworks Science Barge, Teatown Reservation, Jay Heritage Center, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
Leadership and associations.
ConEd Solutions is a member of Real Estate Board of New York.
Bribery prosecution.
On January 14, 2009, eleven Con Edison supervisors were arrested for demanding more than $1 million in kickbacks related to work done by a construction company that was repairing the midtown steam pipe eruption of 2007. According to federal prosecutors, the employees had approved payment for work that was unnecessary or not performed, and promised faster payment for some work performed by the construction company in exchange for the bribes. The FBI had two retired Con Edison employees and the president of the construction company wear recording devices that recorded the suspects demanding bribes of between $1000 to $5000. Later that year Con Edison sued Brendan Maher, one of the construction supervisors who was arrested and later admitted taking bribes that the utility company claimed amounted to $10,000.
In April 2016, Con Edison agreed to pay over $171 million, about 1.5% of its annual revenue, back to its customers in compensation for harm resulting from the bribery. The Public Service Commission had found that Con Edison failed to supervise the employees. Con Edison admitted no wrongdoing.
Honors and criticism.
In March 2002, "Fortune" magazine named the company as one of "America's Most Admired Companies" in the publication's newest corporate ranking survey. In 2003, Con Edison ranked second on the top ten list for electric and gas utilities.
In December 2011, the non-partisan organization Public Campaign released a report criticizing ConEd for spending $1.8 million on lobbying and not paying any taxes during 2008–2010, instead getting $127 million in tax rebates, despite making a profit of $4.2 billion, and increasing executive pay by 82% to $17.4 million in 2010 for its top five executives.
In 2014, Con Edison was named the #1 utility and #16 overall among corporations, in "Newsweeks" Green Rankings, and one of the 50 best companies for Latinas by "Latina Style Magazine". In its "Best of the Best" issue in 2015, "Hispanic Network Magazine" named the company a top employer among energy, gas, and oil companies. Con Edison was also selected as one of the top regional utilities by "DiversityInc" magazine in 2014. In 2016, the company was listed among America's best large employers by "Forbes".
Adaptive re-use of former Con Ed buildings.
A former Con Edison building on West 53rd Street in Manhattan was converted first into the studio for the television game show "Let's Make a Deal", and later into a recording studio called "The Power Station" because of its Edison history. In 1996, the studio was renamed Avatar Studios.
In 1978, Con Edison sold the Excelsior Power Company Building, a former substation on Gold Street in Manhattan's Financial District. It was renovated into an apartment building, and became a New York City designated landmark in 2016.


Geothermal power in Canada

Canada has substantial potential for geothermal energy development. To date, development has all been for heating applications. Canada has 103,523 direct use installations as of 2013. There is currently no electricity being generated from geothermal sources in Canada although substantial potential exists in the Canadian Cordillera. The most advanced project exists as a test geothermal-electrical site at the Mount Meager massif in British Columbia, where a 100 MW facility could be developed. Potential for enhanced geothermal energy systems (EGS) exists throughout Canada. There are six geothermal power and two direct use projects listed with the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association.
Canadian geothermal resources in context.
The United States currently leads global development of geothermal power with 3,477 MWe of installed electrical power capacity, including 312 MWe added between 2010 and 2015. Whereas, Canada has 0 MW online, however, the geology conducive to geothermal development does not arbitrarily end at the Canada–United States border. A number of states that share a border with Canada have significant geothermal capacity in development. It is estimated that Alaska has 95 MW in development, Idaho has 438-514 MW, Washington has 100 MW and even North Dakota has two small developments underway.
At present, Canada remains the only major country in the Pacific Rim that is not producing electricity from its geothermal resources. This is despite the fact that the colder it is outside, the more electricity a geothermal power plant can produce. This is because the larger the temperature differentials between the geothermal resource and the ambient air temperature, the more efficiently geothermal plants operate. This makes geothermal power ideal for cold northern countries.
2012 Geological Survey of Canada Report.
In 2012, the Geological Survey of Canada issued a report entitled, the "Geothermal Energy Resource Potential of Canada (Open File 6914) ("The GSC Report"). The GSC Report concluded that "Canada’s in-place geothermal power exceeds one million times Canada’s current electrical consumption." Even if just a fraction of this energy can be put to use, it has the potential to significantly impact the Canadian electricity grid.
The GSC Report also notes that the now-defunct National Geothermal Program (a Canadian government research program that ended in 1986) demonstrated that Canada has a geological environment favourable to geothermal development. This program defined high-temperature resources suitable for geothermal exploration and development, particularly in British Columbia, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Medium and low-temperature geothermal resources were also defined within sedimentary basins and abandoned mines throughout Canada. Pilot projects drilled at Meager Creek, British Columbia, and Regina, Saskatchewan further proved that geothermal power production in Canada is feasible. Now, 25 years since the program ended, advancements in technologies have further increased the economic potential of these geothermal resources.
Highest potential regions.
For utility-scale electrical generation using traditional dry steam and flash steam power stations, high temperature resources at reasonable drill depths are required. The study therefore defines regions at 150 °C that are at a depth of 5 km or shallower as having high potential for high temperature geothermal systems such as electricity generation. Regions that meet such criteria include British Columbia, extreme northern Alberta, southeastern Yukon, and Northwest Territories.
For utility-scale electrical generation using binary cycle power stations, regions with hot springs and warm sedimentary basins with temperatures between 80 and 150 °C at reasonable drill depths are required. These regions include British Columbia, western and southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, Yukon, and Northwest Territories.
For geothermal heat pumps, regions with moderate and cool temperature sedimentary basins and/or fractured rock that can easily produce waters, or be easy to drill shallow well systems for the installation of circulation loops, are required. These regions include British Columbia, Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba, northern and southern Ontario, southern Quebec, New Brunswick, northern Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.
Recent developments.
Alberta.
On 1 August 2019, Razor Energy - a Calgary-based oil and gas company - announced the development of a 21 MW hybrid geothermal and natural gas-fired power station in Swan Hills, Alberta. The project is expected to be operational by early 2020.
On 19 August 2019, the Government of Alberta announced that it had approved a 10 MW geothermal project near Rocky Mountain House called Eavor-Loop. Like the Borealis GeoPower project in British Columbia, Eavor-Loop will serve as a geothermal project pilot.
On 23 August 2019, the Government of Alberta approved the construction of a conventional 5 MW geothermal project near Greenview. The project is being led by Terrapin Geothermics in partnership with the Municipal District of Greenview and PCL Construction. The project is called the "Alberta No.1 Geothermal Project", a tribute to the discovery of oil at the Leduc No. 1 oil drilling site in 1947.
British Columbia.
On 1 June 2018, the BC Oil and Gas Commission issued its first ever permit authorizing the construction of a geothermal energy project within the province. Borealis GeoPower plans to drill four geothermal wells near Valemount as a small geothermal project pilot.
On 28 January 2020, the Government of British Columbia awarded a permit to the Fort Nelson First Nation to develop a geothermal project for the Fort Nelson area called the "Clark Lake Geothermal Project".
Saskatchewan.
On 14 January 2019, the Canadian government announced it will provide C$25.6 million in funding the development of a 5 MW geothermal power station near Estevan, Saskatchewan. The project is led by the Deep Earth Energy Production Corporation.
Yukon.
On 29 January 2020, Eavor Technologies and the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation entered into a partnership to develop a 3 MW closed-loop geothermal system the company calls an "Eavor-Loop" near Little Salmon Carmacks, Yukon.


Mosenergo

Mosenergo (also known as TGK-3;) is the largest Russian power generating company operating on fossil fuel and the largest thermal generation company in the world. In addition to electric power it also generates and sells heat for consumers in Moscow and the Moscow Oblast. The company was founded in 1887 in Moscow.
The power plants of Mosenergo have installed electricity capacity of 11,100 MW and thermal capacity of 39,900 MW. Mosenergo operates 17 power plants with 104 cogeneration turbines, 7 gas-turbine units, one combined cycle power unit, two expansion generation units, 117 power boilers, and 114 peak-load boilers.
Mosenergo is a subsidiary of Gazprom. Its shares are listed on the Moscow Exchange and London Stock Exchange. Even after the split of assets by production and financial parameters the company remains one of the leading companies in Russia's power industry.


American Wind Power Center

The American Wind Power Center is a museum of wind power in Lubbock, Texas. Located on of city park land east of downtown Lubbock, the museum has more than 160 American style windmills on exhibition.
History.
The center was established in 1993 by Miss Billie Wolfe and Coy F. Harris. Wolfe, a faculty member at Texas Tech University, began searching for windmills in the early 1960s. She photographed and documented windmills across the nation and encouraged people to save what windmills were still standing. Thirty years later, there had been several individuals who had restored a number of early mills and Wolfe located one of these in Mitchell, Nebraska. By this time, Harris was working with Wolfe and he arranged, disassembled and moved this collection of forty-eight rare windmills to Lubbock.
These windmills remained in storage until 1997, when the City of Lubbock authorized an area of land for the museum. Harris and volunteers moved the collection to this new site. Windmills were erected on the grounds and inside a modest exhibit building.
In 1999, a much larger building became available, and Harris directed the movement of this building to the park site. He redesigned part of the "metal fabrication building" to better fit the windmills.
Presently.
At the present time, there are more than a hundred rare and historic water pumping windmills displayed inside. Another sixty windmills are erected on the grounds with many pumping water.
Complementing the water pumping windmills are wind electric machines. Some of these date to the early 1920s. Dominating the windmill grounds is a Vestas V47 wind turbine. This 660 kW turbine stands on a 50-meter tower and provides (on a yearly average) all of the power required by the museum facility. Excess energy is sold to the local power grid.
In 2009, the museum unveiled a mural on a -tall space stretching long. The massive painting highlights the history of windmills from the West Texas perspective, from water-pumping structures to wind-powered generators. The work was undertaken by LaGina Fairbetter, an artist originally from Abilene, Texas, and her assistant, Jenny Cox.
The center was unveiled in a grand dedication held on October 17, 2009.
On June 22, 2016 the center opened a new addition that houses a "G" scale train display featuring the early 1900s scenery when windmills and trains were life sources for each other. There are historic wind turbines on display, some of which date back to the 1920s. This wing of the museum also houses the Alta Reeds miniature house collection.