Power-grid gridlock? Who would’ve thought?!

Finding space on nation’s grid for all electricity, no easy order, apparently

It seems in some parts of the country the nation’s existing power transmission-line infrastructure lacks sufficient capacity to handle all the electricity trying to be fed it – be this from renewable or non-renewable sources; at least , for the time being, anyway.

Trevor Graff of the McClatchy Washington Bureau in “Newly available wind power often has no place to go,” in citing Duke Energy’s “renewables president” Greg Wolf, wrote: “Wolf said deficiencies in the grid and differing state policies on the placement of transmission lines were prime causes of congestion.”

Adding needed transmission-line capacity to satisfactorily and safely handle the electricity produced from all sources, the way I see it, is going to take time and energy and getting there is not going to come cheap.

According to Graff, Duke Energy and Sumitomo Corp., in June 2012 near Cimarron, Kansas brought online wind-turbine electrical power with output potential rated at 131 megawatts – enough for 40,000 homes.

And getting that electricity to market appears now to be no small task due to significant existing electric grid congestion in that area.

Added Graff, “At the end of last year, installed wind-generation capacity totaled 60 gigawatts nationwide – 5 percent of the nation’s production capacity – according to data from the U.S. Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Another 135 gigawatts of potential wind production awaits development and connection to the grid, according to industry data.”

Vying for electric grid space, whoever would have thought?!

The clean-air-quality implications here, I don’t think they are too difficult to see.

– Alan Kandel