U.s. wind power strangled by antiquated power grid

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm spent $320 1000000 to erect about 200 windmills in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

That is a symptom of a broad subject problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore's hope of replacement all dodo fuels in a decennary, are bumping up against the world of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is acquiring easier, moving it to marketplace is not.

The grid today, according to experts, is a scheme conceived 100 years ago to let public utility prop each other up, reduction blackouts and sharing power across small part. It resembles a web of streets, avenues and state roads.

"We need an interstate transmission expressway system," said Sudeen Kelley, a member of the Federal soldier Energy Regulatory Commission, which governs many interstate transmission undertaking.

While the United States now gets less than 1 percentage of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are start to believe that fig could hit 20 percentage.

Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated field in the center of the state to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the state's deserts that would pose the same transmittal job.

The grid's restriction are putt a damper on such undertaking already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of apparent horizon Wind, the company that operates Maple Ridge, noted that in parts of Equality State, a turbine could make 50 percentage more electricity than an identical model installed in New York or Texas.

"The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers," he said.

The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections among them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.

The transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, atop Tug Hill near Lowville, New York, have sometimes become so congested that the company's only choice was to shut down - or pay fees to the grid operator for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.

Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid's limitations and have been talking seriously about solving them for a decade, but they have made little progress. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid but have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.

Another problem is that the grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles, or 322,000 kilometers, of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments, and numerous permits. Construction costs are astronomical, and every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners who do not want to look at a line of power pylons marching across the landscape.

These barriers mean that electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to U.S. Government figures. In the last 20 years, according to the U.S. Energy Department, peak electrical demand is up more than 53 percent but the means to transmit that electricity have grown by only 12 percent. (The vulnerability of the grid became clear in August 2003, when trouble on a few power lines in Ohio precipitated a blackout that affected 50 million people in the Northeastern United States and Canada.)

In legislation passed in 2005, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic states and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 U.S. Senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.

Energy Department officials say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way of a vital priority.

"Viewed from a broad perspective, it is clear that modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share," Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, said in a speech last year.

Unlike many of the nation's energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no fancy new technology.