RSS
Home
Wyoming-Colorado Intertie Closes Open Season
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Wind turbines from the Maple Ridge Wind Farm tower
over a farm in Lowville, N.Y., Monday, Aug. 4,
2008. The $400 million Maple Ridge wind project,
the largest in New York state, brought money and
jobs and a wondrous sense of prosperity to a place
that had long given up on any. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
In a sign of progress on developing wind powered electric capacity, a new transmission line connecting Wyoming to Denver, Colorado successfully auctioned rights to 585 MW of capacity to Wind Farm developers. The partnership was first announced in September, 2005. The line has a planned capacity of 850 MW of capacity. The line developers hope to sell the remaining 265 MW of capacity by 2013 when the line will begin operating.
This line does represent progress in renewable energy development. We should however, put its size into perspective of what is needed to reduce our carbon emissions. In a previous article I noted that it will take building 50 GW of renewable power capacity to achieve a carbon emissions reduction of 80% over 40 years. That’s Barack Obama’s goal for reducing emissions. This transmission line is an eight year project. It will add transmission capacity of 106 MW per year. That represents two tenths of one percent (0.2%) of the annual capacity required to meet the 80% reduction goal.
It is actually a good start. This line will carry wind power to the Denver Colorado market. Because of the variable nature of wind power, it needs to be widely distributed to help eliminate fluctuations in power output. Wind power can only be part of the total electric sources for any one local grid. Any one local grid should also be able to pull wind power from a large geographic area.
There are more transmission lines being developed and will be needed to carry wind power from the central states to eastern, southern, and western cities. Texas is building an 18 GW power transmission system to capture energy from wind farms in Texas. There is another group building a transmission line from Southern Wyoming to California. But keep in mind the huge additional need for renewable energy.
Transmission and Distribution World
