The following is a small selection of items recently published by EPRI. To view complete lists of your company-funded research reports, updates, software, training announcements, and other program deliverables, log in at www.epri.com and go to Program Cockpits.
This study evaluated the technical and economic feasibility of a power plant dry cooling system concept involving devices called green chillers. Driven by waste heat, green chillers use chilled water to condense turbine exhaust steam and keep condensation temperatures low. The system has a high potential to minimize the power production penalties that come with other dry cooling systems.
This software helps utilities estimate, track, and report data on chemical releases from fossil-fueled power plants, indicating whether emissions exceed thresholds in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory program. A separate module allows users to transfer results to EPA’s reporting software.
This report identifies good practices for engineers responsible for emergency diesel generator systems in nuclear plants, drawing on experience and expertise from diesel system engineers and other plant personnel. It can be used for training and guidance for new and experienced engineers.
This report discusses the field test results of SABRE, a ground-based wind turbine inspection and data management system. The research collaboration between EPRI and Digital Wind Systems demonstrated that SABRE is a fast, non-intrusive, and cost-effective inspection technology.
The federal Endangered Species Act requires electric power facilities to consider the impacts of their operations on threatened or endangered species. This study characterizes the distribution of 532 petitioned species, 101 candidate species, and 42 proposed species under the law across the contiguous United States, identifying the Southeast as the region with the greatest density of these species.
Nuclear plant decommissioning involves characterizing, staging, packaging, and shipping large quantities of waste—which can have a major impact on project cost and schedule. This report summarizes waste management experiences, strategies, and lessons in the United States and abroad to guide future decommissioning.
Drawing on knowledge of industry experts, this application demonstrates in 3-D the disassembly and reassembly of the two types of trip and throttle valves used in nuclear plants. Experienced technicians can use it to re-familiarize themselves with maintenance and inspection of these components. It can also be used to train new technicians. The application is loaded as a stand-alone application on the user’s computer.
As utilities deploy new smart grid devices and applications, they need a pervasive communications infrastructure that enables various grid elements to talk with one another and with central and distributed control systems. To help utilities implement such infrastructure, this study investigates current and future communications requirements for transmission and distribution applications; the parts of the private licensed communications spectrum that best meet these requirements; standards and equipment that support the identified spectrum bands; and availability of the identified bands.
This technical brief describes issues related to potential conflicts between electric power operations and endangered and protected species, such as power line electrocutions, collisions with wind turbines, avian deaths from solar power technologies, habitat alteration from hydroelectric dams, and construction of infrastructure.
EPRI is collaborating with utilities and technology companies to develop national outage data standards for increased data accuracy, timely dissemination to the public, and faster response by emergency management personnel and first responders. As part of this initiative, this report provides hypothetical examples of how standardized outage data would be distributed to the public and first responders.
As technology development, environmental regulations, and shifting fuel costs drive rapid changes in the electric power resource mix, it’s important to consider the impacts on system reliability. This white paper provides insights on the ability of different resource groups to support various aspects of reliability.
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