VENERABLE WIND & POTENT SOLAR AT SYSTEM LIMITS, NEED NEW WIRES

Wind Turbines: A ‘Green’ Technology With Technological Limits
Elizabeth Wasserman, April 19, 2009 (CQ Politics)

SUMMARY
There is a new, exciting chapter today being written in the history of one the oldest machines.

Windmills, developed long before industrialization, were originally used to turn grindstones and pump water. Use increased when they were harnessed to generate electricity. By the 1920s, they were everywhere on the rural, agricultural landscape.

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The Rural Electrification Administration (REA), one of the greatest achievement’s of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, brought the power grid to the back country and consigned windmills to second string work.

Today’s wind industry is turning the REA around. Farmers, ranchers and other rural landowners are becoming power producers and the wires that once brought electricity to them are now carrying away the bounty of their energy harvest.

The wind industry and transmission system operators are laying plans to be able to provide 20% of U.S. power with wind-generated electricity by 2030.

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One thing has not changed: Wind is still most readily harvested in remote, rural, open terrain. The biggest need for it is in densely populated urban centers. New transmission is once again needed but this time the transmission is needed to carry the power the other way.

Like wind, there is sun everywhere. The open terrain where solar power plants can be built to harvest sun in large quantities, however, are - like the best places for big wind installations - those remote, rural regions.

What the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) want is a Green Power SuperHighway. Their concept is endorsed by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), the Working group for Investment in Reliable and Economic electric Systems(WIRES), the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

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COMMENTARY
Contemporary wind installations are composed of tens, hundreds and even thousands of turbines. Turbines have capacities undreamed of by the farmers of the pre-REA era. They also have computerized gearing mechanisms capable of responding to highly varied weather conditions without an interruption of service.

Solar power plant technology is evolving equally fast, achieving capacities and costs comparable to new coal-fired plants.

The U.S. wind industry took world leadership of installed capacity away from Germany in 2008 and the U.S. solar industry is on track to do the same in coming years.

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Congress acknowledged the potential for unbridled growth in the New Energies with crucial provisions in the 2008 financial rescue plan and the 2009 stimulus plan. The energy plan presently being coordinated by the White House and leaders in the House and Senate is expected to add significant incentives for New Energy growth.

A national Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) requiring U.S. utilities to obtain 10% of their power from New Energy sources by 2012 and 25% by 2025 is on the agenda. So is a cap&trade system to require reductions in greenhouse gas (GhG) generation and fund New Energy advances. So is a national Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS) , requiring utilities to improve their efficiency with electricity 15% by 2020. These measures are aimed at fulfilling the President's short term goal of doubling New Energy capacity in the next 3 years but they will eventually bring New Energy to the center of the U.S. power system.

The AWEA/SEIA vision is of a 765-kV national transmission mainstream, a set of extra high voltage wires with a big carrying capacity and relatively little loss of power over long distances compared to today's system. It would have "smart" capabiliites, allowing it to bring power on where the wind is blowing or the sun is shining and deliver to urban centers where insatiable but variable demand is constantly ramping.

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New Energy and new transmission are not without barriers:
(1) Because of complaints about intrusion on the landscape, environmentalists and energy producers are forming working groups to preselect Renewable Energy Zones (REZs), areas where opposing positions can be resolved on the common understanding that at some sites New Energy supply must have priority.
(2) There were complaints about wind turbine noise that were carefully studied. Standards were established to keep turbines far enough from where people are to prevent harm. Where those standards are observed, the problem has been essentially eliminated.
(3) Concerns about wildlife habitat provoked powerful environmentalist-energy producer working groups to sort out ongoing issues. This is not a matter tbat will evber be dismissed. The solution is in facing the challenges as they come up.
(4) Certain species of birds and bats have flown into turbine blades. With birds, the problem was clarified almost 3 decades ago and has been largely eliminated. House cats now kill more birds than turbines. The wind industry is still working with bat specialists to sort out that problem and there was just recently news of a potentially game-changing breakthrough. (See WIND FACES CHALLENGES, FINDS SOLUTIONS)
(5) A reassignment of regulatory authority may be needed in order to site new transmission in a timely manner. Jurisdiction - not to mention petty power - now rests in the hands of state and local authorities. Approval for interstate wires - that would be run at a cost to some but to the benefit all - may need to come from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). And Congress may need to emphasize FERC's right to exercise eminent domain if national transmission - a national security issue - is at stake.

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QUOTES
- Sandy Butterfield, wind program chief engineer, U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)/ Department of Energy: “[Small wind turbines] gave farmers the ability to turn on their lights or their radios to connect with the rest of the world…”

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- AWEA/SEIA report calling for the Green Power SuperHighway: “A robust transmission grid provides consumers with access to lower-cost electricity…On a severely constrained transmission grid, as now exists in many parts of the United States, consumers are forced to rely on local power plants even though plants in other regions can produce power more efficiently and at lower cost.”
- Butterfield, NREL: “If we had a stronger grid, we could pump power from wind-rich areas in the West to Chicago, St. Louis and maybe even New York…”