Lack of power lines seen as obstacle in wind development

The United States has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind, but transmission line deficiencies might keep the nation from achieving its wind energy goals.

An Energy Department (DoE) study estimated that as much as 20 percent of the nation’s electricity could come from wind. Renewable energy of all types now supplies less than 3 percent to the grid.

{mosads}But without enough transmission lines to carry the energy from the windy but remote regions where it is produced to the cities that consume it, wind power will continue to play a relatively small role in the nation’s energy mix, according to testimony this week at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which was billed as the first-ever congressional hearing on the transmission obstacles to more wind development.

Energy Department officials have said the lack of transmission capacity is the biggest impediment to greater development of wind power.

The hearing brought in such energy luminaries as T. Boone Pickens, the chairman of BP Capital Management , who made his fortune in the oil and gas industry but has more recently bet big bucks on wind power.

“Since we can’t do much about where nature has put the wind, we have to do something about transmission to move the electricity to market,” Pickens told the committee.

The long process of siting transmission projects due to not-in-my-backyard concerns frustrate power line construction, said Donald Furman of Iberdrola Renewables , a wind energy development company. Furman spoke at a press conference sponsored by the American Wind Energy Association , a trade group, last week.

Furman said federal regulators should have more power to determine where transmission lines are built. Regulatory responsibility now largely rests with state officials.

“Electrons don’t care about state lines,” Furman said.

Individual states now have the ability to block the construction of transmission lines that might be beneficial to the larger region.

Furman also voiced support for Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), which operate large regional electricity markets. These entities typically draw power from a number of states. The greater the number of power sources, the better grid managers can manage wind’s major flaw: its variability.

Power distributors need to know there is enough electricity to meet demand at any time. But wind’s intermittency — the wind doesn’t always blow, critics point out — make it a not-very-reliable source of base-load power of the like provided now primarily by coal and nuclear utilities.

Furman also proposes a greater sharing of the costs to construct power lines. He believes that one state shouldn’t bear the entire financial burden for interstate transmission lines that benefit an entire region.

But although the linkage between power line capacity and renewable energy is receiving renewed interest on Capitol Hill, the issues surrounding power line construction have surfaced before.

Consensus has been elusive. Members of Congress have been reluctant, for example, to take away regulatory power from local officials and give it to federal regulators.

Beyond local concerns over aesthetics — power lines are hulking structures that spoil views — cost is another obstacle to more power line construction. DoE estimates that it would cost $60 billion to reach the 20 percent goal.

“There is no useful way to build a transmission line in phases. It either is or it isn’t. As a result, the costs are all incurred at once before it is available for use,” testified Pickens. That means a big upfront investment before any return, and years of regulatory headaches in between.

Pickens proposed a radical shift to the energy mix. To reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, he proposed using natural gas as a transportation fuel and replacing it in the mix of sources that generate electricity with wind power. Roughly 20 percent of the power produced in the United States comes from natural gas.

By doing this, Pickens estimated that the country would decrease foreign imports by 38 percent.

It would also encourage more investment in renewables, Pickens said. Without incentives like the production tax credit, which was part of a larger tax bill that was rejected by the Senate this week, investors are hesitant to pour capital into the renewable market, Pickens said.

But not Pickens himself. He has announced plans to put billions of dollars into a wind energy project.

“I would not be willing to do it if I was not a believer that Congress will do the right thing in the end,” he said.