Planning — February 2010 Transmission BoostA surge in wind power means the U.S. needs to seriously upgrade its grid. That's easier said than done. By Allen Best Chicago's ill-deserved nickname aside, wind and cities rarely mix. For stiff and steady winds, look to where few people live, states such as North Dakota and Wyoming, which rank 48th and 50th respectively in populations. One exception is Texas, third in population. It huffs and puffs — but far from its cities. By 2030, a fifth of the nation's electricity could be provided by wind, says the U.S. Department of Energy — but not with the existing transmission grid. To get there, the agency estimates the cost of upgrades at $60 billion. "If you're going to be for renewable energy generation, you have to be for transmission," said Marc Spitzer, a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, at a conference in Denver. The agency regulates interstate transmission of natural gas but has more narrow authority over electrical transmission. Barack Obama, when stumping for president in 2008, said much the same thing: "If we're going to be serious about renewable energy, I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers like Chicago." But getting wind or some other source of electricity from North Dakota to Chicago or anyplace else remains problematic. While dozens of transmission lines have been proposed during recent years in the U.S., very few have been built. Blocking the work have been fundamental disagreements about need and uncertainty about equitable allocation of construction costs. Also, the regulatory landscape is both Byzantine and balkanized. Rules were drawn up for a time when electricity was largely generated and consumed locally.
Richard Walje, president of Rocky Mountain Power, a utility based in Utah, wryly observes that if the first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869 had been built the way transmission lines are, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads would have ended up 150 miles apart, and passengers would have been forced to take a shuttle between them. Even those who generally want the federal government to butt out of state affairs call for a federal role in determining transmission routes. "It seems amazing to me that we were able to put a railroad from one coast to the other, and interstate highways that go everywhere, but we can't find common corridors for our transmission across this country," said North Dakota State Rep. Al Carlson at an energy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in October. Carlson sees transmission as the short circuit to economic development in North Dakota. Mark Stutz, a media relations director for Xcel Energy, says wind, solar, and natural gas generation can all be developed in as little as 18 months, but high-voltage transmission lines generally take three to five years. In some rare cases, erecting transmission lines can take as long as a decade. But Carlson is insistent that the federal government remain neutral when it comes to the sources of electricity transmitted over these lines. "If you equate it to a federal interstate highway system, I trust them on that. But if they told me what I could ship over those lines, that would be a problem. If they said it had to have 90 percent wind power, I wouldn't want that." Green Power Express Many of the issues surrounding long-distance electrical transmission are being played out in the project called the Green Power Express. It would ship 12,000 megawatts of electricity from the Dakotas to cities along the Great Lakes, including Chicago and Milwaukee, and then on to the East Coast. The potential developer is ITC Holdings, the nation's largest developer of transmission lines. The cost is estimated at $10 billion to $12 billion. Nina Plaushin, director of federal and legislative affairs for ITC Holdings, says this transmission line and others must be rapidly approved and developed if states hope to achieve renewable energy standards. In 2008, nonhydroelectric renewables provided only three percent of U.S. electricity. Almost half of all states have adopted renewable energy portfolios, mandating that between five and 33 percent of all energy come from renewables within the next three to 20 years. "We have a long way to go," says Plaushin. "We need to start building that transmission now." But there has been pushback, even among renewable energy advocates. Carol Overland, a lawyer in Minnesota who works with environmental groups in challenging utilities' activities, remains suspicious that the lines will be loaded with what she calls "black energy" — electricity from coal mines yet to be built in North Dakota. "I have never seen a transmission line that was ever built for the reasons given to justify it," Overland says. She believes many proposed lines would be unnecessary if homes and businesses used energy more efficiently and if renewable energy sources were deployed locally. States on the East Coast also object. In a letter released in May, the governors of 10 states from Virginia to Maine announced that they could generate their own renewable energy — and gain the jobs that go with it. The governors noted the well-documented value of offshore wind and the potential for more wind farms on land. "A regional approach to transmission would support economic development and green jobs in this region, without the burdensome costs associated with transmission lines from the Midwest," said Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri in a press release posted May 5, 2009. The governors also objected to the "injection of a federal jurisdiction into an area traditionally handled by states and regions." Dave Corbus, a senior engineer at the National Regional Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, says a study of transmission in the Eastern Interconnection — one of the three alternating current power grids in the continental U.S. — shows that there's room for both. "Wind from the Great Plains and locally generated wind [on the East Coast] are not mutually exclusive," and the region would need both to meet state renewable portfolio standards calling for 20 percent of energy to come from wind and other renewable sources, he says.
Knitting together the nation Most of the nation's existing 164,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines were built for local, not cross-country travel. With the notable exception of dams on rivers, most power plants were located near cites, so major transmission lines of more than 230 kilovolts were necessary for only relatively short distances. Utility customers paid for the lines and state and local decision makers governed their planning and siting, so the people who were affected by them and those who benefited from them were more or less the same group. This electrical grid was expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. However, investment tapered off while both demand and the development of new methods of generation increased. Today, congestion has become a problem in many areas. Congress in 2005 gave the FERC additional power to make transmission routing decisions, but only in narrowly defined national-interest corridors, including the mid-Atlantic states and the Southwest. Proponents of an expanded grid say more power lines would alleviate overcrowding and make electricity delivery more reliable and less vulnerable to problems. A more interconnected electrical grid would also level the marketplace, something that started with the deregulation trend of the 1980s and eventually led to the creation of RTOs, or regional transmission organizations. The RTOs created regional marketplaces for electricity, allowing more flexibility and hence more efficiency in connecting buyers with wholesale suppliers. Legislation passed by Congress in 2002 and in 2005 further nudged along this concept of regionalization of electricity — although not in the West. (With the exception of California, residents of the West enjoy some of the nation's lowest electric rates, thanks to the region's giant hydroelectric dams and plentiful deposits of low-sulfur coal.) Now comes the push to integrate renewable energy into the production of electricity. So far, 24 states have adopted standards specifying minimum production from renewable energy sources. Congressional support has grown for a national standard. A study completed in 2009 by the Tennessee Valley Authority and five other organizations in the East and Midwest envisioned a $100 billion investment in transmission of renewable energy from the nation's windy interior via 15,000 miles of extremely high-voltage lines. The report found that another $720 billion would be needed for wind farms if the nation is to get 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2024. In 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, only one percent of the nation's electricity came from wind. But in this push for a new grid, advocates see the old rules governing the planning, siting, and allocation of costs for transmission lines as archaic. "We need a more centralized federal role," says Michael Goggin, manager of transmission policy at the American Wind Energy Association. "You need federal siting authority. Otherwise, you will have individual states [along the route] using them as an unfair negotiating position, trying to extract as much as they can." A torrent of reports has been issued in the last two years calling for a network of new transmission lines to get renewable energy from rural America to metropolitan markets. But so far, a spot check of several local planners reveals that transmission itself hasn't become a big issue. In Arizona's Navajo County, for example, various proposals now being assembled for wind and solar generation would affect 100,000 people, with a variety of attendant issues, but transmission itself has only been peripheral, says county planning director Greg Loper, AICP.
Who pays? Allocating costs of construction remains a prickly issue. Before, when power generation and transmission were mostly in-state affairs, costs of the lines were paid directly by those consumers who benefited. But in some of the new mega-transmission line schemes, entire states could become the equivalent of flyover country. Texas — which has 8,795 megawatts of installed capacity for wind generation, the most in the nation — chose to allocate the costs of transmission to all customers. But Texas is unique in the continental U.S. in that it has its own electrical grid. Other states are either in the Western Interconnection, the 11 states from the Rocky Mountains westward, or the Eastern Interconnection, those from Nebraska eastward. The three grids — which extend into Canada and Mexico — interface in only a few places. The grids were assembled during the last century, but no one organization controls any one of them. None provides a practical or financial model for how the country might approach a nationwide network of transmission lines. The most fundamental problem, say transmission advocates, is whether the cost can be assessed broadly, as in Texas, in proportion to benefits. Another question of fairness is whether the costs should be spread over generations of consumers who will benefit. And tied into this question is whether transmission lines should be overbuilt at the outset to accommodate increased use in the future. In both cases, geographical distribution and generational equity, many are looking to the federal government for solutions. Most environmental groups have been at least cautiously supportive of long-distance transmission. They reason that, while there will be inevitable environmental impacts, the even greater dangers of global warming justify them. "We haven't opposed transmission in the last five years," says Katie Nekola, energy program director for Clean Wisconsin, an advocacy group. It is, she explains, a matter of priorities. Environmental groups emphasize the need for energy efficiency and demand-side management, but they also want to be engaged in planning at the outset. Although slowed by the recession, dozens of ideas have been taking shape across the nation. Since longer transmission lines can even out the output of different renewable energy sources, one proposal, the High Plains Express, centers on a transmission line that would pick up winds from Wyoming and Colorado — which oddly enough tend to blow at different times — and then cross into New Mexico and Arizona, grabbing more wind and solar along the way. Another major proposal would deliver 7,000 megawatts from wind sources in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to Tennessee. That's enough to meet the needs of 2.8 to 3.5 million homes. For transmission planners, these are exciting times, says Lynn Coles, a senior engineer in the transmission and grid integration group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "I have been a transmission planner for a long time, and throughout the '80s and '90s, there just wasn't that much activity." Exporting Wyoming wind Blessed with both wind and sun, western governors in 2004 began plotting the basics for long-distance transmission for what Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter dubbed the "new energy economy." Pivotal in this discussion has been Wyoming, which is up to its neck in what you might call the old energy economy of carbon. The state, with less than 0.5 percent of the nation's population, provides 15 percent of all energy consumed. To help develop wind but possibly other resources, state legislators in 2004 created the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority. The agency has the authority to participate in the planning, financing, and operating of electrical transmission facilities and has a bonding authority of $1 billion. But even in sparsely populated Wyoming there is getting to be a lot of clutter. Populations of sage grouse have been declining, causing worries that the bird could be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, which could complicate the siting of transmission lines. Further, without a long-term, comprehensive strategy, community planners don't know what's in store. Will they process one transmission line only to have another go through the same area just two years later? In the western states, which are dominated by federal lands, the process becomes even more cumbersome, with any number of agencies having responsibility for the review of just one transmission proposal. Wyoming officials have called for consolidation of utility corridors, to avoid what Gov. Dave Freudenthal calls a spaghetti-plate of transmission lines. One way to help achieve that would be to oversize transmission lines, which would increase the initial costs. Another idea is to create corridors wide enough to accommodate several lines. Building for this distant future will require "phenomenal amounts of money," points out Jim Tarpey, a public utilities commissioner in neighboring Colorado and a long-time transmission lawyer. "Nobody is going to see a return on that investment for maybe 35 to 40 years," he says. He suggests the federal government could finance such projects, then sell capacity to utilities as demand grows. Wyoming has also been asking whether it can make money on the export of wind power — and whether transmission lines for wind energy could come into conflict with carbon-based energy sources. Laura Ladd, an energy advisor to Gov. Freudenthal, points out that much of Wyoming's income comes from a severance tax on extractions of coal, natural gas, and oil. Wind is free — something renewable advocates point to as its advantage. But that leaves the question of "what's in it for Wyoming?" Will property taxes suffice? "We want to make sure renewable energy pays its fair share," Ladd says. Although six high-voltage transmission lines originating in Wyoming are now being vetted, the progress is slow, reports Steve Ellenbecker, executive director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority. "These projects are inching along, rather than leaping forward." As transmission lines are developed, Ellenbecker believes they should be routed in ways that deliver benefits to jurisdictions all along the way. "That dramatically improves the odds of success," he says. "We have to find an effective way to demonstrate regional and then national interests in allowing these projects to go forward." Three bills introduced in the U.S. Senate would give the federal government a stronger role in transmission. One possible scenario is that Congress would give the states an opportunity to negotiate with each other to determine long-distance transmission routes and costs — stepping in only if the states can't reach agreement. Legislators from 14 states in the West, including Alaska and Hawaii, recently called for regional collaboration on transmission lines. One approach might be a regional compact, similar to those arranged for watersheds. But if collaboration has become the buzzword, the politics of transmission will likely remain local. Walje, the utility executive from Utah, says he has faced high school gymnasiums full of people anxious about transmission lines. "I haven't yet had anybody come up to me and say they would like to see a power line in their front yard." At the end of the day, transmission siting will inevitably leave somebody's nose out of joint. Making that point at an October conference in Wisconsin was Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, the nation's third largest utility. When you're talking transmission lines, he said, you're talking about eminent domain. For the time being, the story of renewables and transmission is often described as a chicken-and-egg situation. Potential developers of wind and solar farms want to be assured of enough transmission capacity to make their projects viable. Transmission line developers don't want to build the infrastructure until they have assurances there will be electrons to move. Meanwhile, everyone is waiting for Congress to set the rules. Expect to hear a lot about transmission planning for the next several years, but consensus may be more difficult. The interstate highway system took time, and this may, too. Allen Best writes about energy, water, and other natural resource issues from his base in Denver. ResourcesImages: Top — On the outskirts of Denver: The Rockies in the background, the transmission lines throught. Proponents of wind and other renewable fuels say that new lines will be needed to transmit energy from windy rural areas to the nation's population centers. Photo by Allen Best. Middle — Wind is where the people aren't: Only seven percent of the U.S. population lives in the windiest 10 states. Map U.S. Department of Energy. Bottom — Expanding electrical transmission lines and grids is one way to capture energy from this renewable source. One 765-kv power line can transmit as much electricity as six 345-kv lines yet requires less than one-third the land. Illustration ITC Holdings Corporation. On the web: "Smart Lines: Transmission for the Renewable Energy Economy," a 2008 report from Western Resource Advocates, is online at www.westernresourceadvocates.org/energy/smartlines.php. "Electric Power Transmission: Background and Policy Issues," by the Congressional Research Service (2009): http://opencrs.com/document/R40511 "Green Power Superhighways: Building a Path to America's Clean Energy Future," American Wind Energy Association and Solar Energy Industries Association (2009): www.awea.org/GreenPowerSuperhighways.pdf "Wired for Progress," Center for American Progress (2009): www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/wired_for_progress.html "20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy's Contribution to U.S. Energy Supply," Department of Energy: www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/41869.pdf | ||
A central issue in this emerging era of what proponents call "green power superhighways" is the role of the federal government. Proponents point out that the federal government has played a central role in creating our national network of railroads, highways, and natural gas pipelines. They say the same leadership is now needed for electrical transmission.
