Climate and energy

The Governors’ Wind Coalition has just released its Wind Energy Recommendations (pdf) (also see AP story). The Coalition is a bipartisan group representing governors from 29 states with a mixture of wind resources, including offshore.

The top recommendation is a federal Renewable Energy Standard (RES) of 10% by 2012. The second recommendation is to improve the nation’s transmission system for both onshore and offshore wind resources. (As a Kansan, I read that and thought well, if anything can make our transmission look cheap by comparison, offshore would be it).

Highlights:

(1) High efficiency, extra high voltage lines take advantage of economies of scale and have minimal environmental impact compared to multiple smaller lines
(2) National policy is needed to coordinate interstate planning and permitting of transmission (but they stopped short of getting into the cost allocation mess, I noted)
(3) Increased transmission makes the cheapest renewables more widely available, and reduces variability in wind resources

The transmission rec in whole follows below.

RECOMMENDATION: Develop New Interstate Electric Transmission System Infrastructure as Needed to Provide Access to Premier Renewable Energy Both On-Shore and Offshore

Developing the states’ rich domestic renewable resources will involve improvements to the electric transmission system. Our national electric grid has evolved over 100 years to serve local markets and meet the needs associated with growing electric loads and new market structures, and it is not well suited to transmit major renewable energy resources from certain rural areas where abundant renewables are found to electricity load centers. Over the last 20 years, transmission investment has not accelerated; to accommodate growth in renewable power, it will need to.

New high-voltage lines built to access renewable-rich areas can capture economies of scale in transmission construction and minimize environmental damage that results from construction of numerous smaller lines to the same area. National policy is needed that will facilitate state and regional coordination in the siting and construction of new interstate transmission projects to deliver large amounts of power from renewable-rich areas. This policy should also facilitate regional coordination in planning and permitting transmission projects to reach renewable resources, while respecting the rights of individual states.

Such a national policy will help support the new wind investments in our states required by a renewable electricity standard. Implementation of this policy will also improve the reliability of the nation’s power system, and reduce electricity generation costs for some consumers.

The existing transmission system was built by a large number of individual power suppliers to increase operating options in their individual systems — thus providing improved reliability and lower costs. Connections to neighboring systems provided additional flexibility and benefits. But the nation’s power network has evolved in accordance with plans developed at local or regional rather than national levels. In general, electricity suppliers have good access to neighboring suppliers, but access to distant systems or regions is often weak or expensive. Direct access to distant resources would require passage through several intermediate systems over wires that may be inadequate to handle the additional traffic in electrons.

A stronger interstate transmission system would provide high efficiency connectivity throughout the nation. Studies have shown that the cost of such a system would be offset several times by the savings that would occur. So why don’t we already have such a system?

A major impediment is that each state has its own approval process for transmission. This means that planning for transmission over a large region becomes mired in deliberations in several states as each states’ differing — often conflicting — views on the evaluation of costs and benefi ts emerge. What is needed is federal and regional facilitation of the process for planning and approving transmission lines that serve multiple states while also respecting the needs and circumstances of the individual states involved. National policies must ensure equitable inclusion of concerns from all relevant stakeholders, including all segments of the electric sector, landowners and other residents along prospective transmission rights of way, environmental-protection organizations, and the financial sector.

In addition to these benefits, a stronger interstate transmission system would provide greatly expanded access to electricity markets for those regions of the country that are rich in renewable energy resources such as wind and solar energy. For this approach to work, considerations in coordinated planning processes could include access to renewables-rich regions as a priority. With this system in place, regions with modest renewable energy resources could have access to more affordable renewable electricity.

This level of coordination would also benefi t the integration of variable- output renewable power plants into the electric power system. Numerous studies have clearly shown that the effects of wind’s variability on power system operation are reduced substantially as reliability responsibilities are shared over larger and larger regions. The reason is that variations in wind plant output and system demand tend to average out over larger regions, and larger regions allow greater access to dispatchable resources that help with system balancing. In order to realize this advantage, robust electrical interconnections within and across regions must exist. A stronger interstate transmission system would support this connectivity.

The cost for an expanded interstate transmission system has been estimated on the order of $75 to $100 billion to support economic power transfers and meet 20% of renewable energy standards. This investment can be obtained from the private sector, since current investments in transmission throughout the nation are now in the range of $5 billion to $10 billion a year from private sources. The primary barrier is determining which generation developers should pay which share of the cost, and how such costs could be included in delivered electricity prices. In particular, actual transmission investment should flow from successful renewable power projects that can offer to purchasers the lowest delivered price of power for their product.

— posted by Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org