Wind Energy Hung Up in the Queue

Originally published for Sun and Wind Energy Magazine:

By Lisa Cohn and Reid Smith

An overabundance of renewable energy should be good news in the US. However, in many renewable-rich areas, the clean energy cannot be integrated into the grid – due to long transmission queues. The solution will likely come from many fronts.

In many ways, the Southwest Power Pool in Arkansas, which manages transmission in parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, finds itself in an enviable position: It has more than enough renewable energy for its own needs. In fact, it has enough to transmit it to other parts of the country – if only that were possible. “We have about 48,000 MW of wind and a little bit of solar in the queue, with an annual peak load of 43,000 MW of wind resources. Just looking at the numbers it is easy to see that the supply could far exceed the demand”, says Les Dillahunty, Vice President of regulatory policy at the Southwest Power Pool. However, without transmission, the clean power will go unused. “Wind has developed in these remote areas and we don’t have sufficient transmission to move it to areas where it’s needed. We don’t have a national energy policy, so where is this power going to go?”, asks Dillahunty.

An overabundance of renewable energy should be good news in the US. However, in many renewable- rich areas, the clean energy cannot be integrated into the transmission grid – due to long transmission queues and no avenues for moving power between regions. Nearly 270,000 MW of wind projects are hung up in transmission queues in the US, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), Washington, D.C.

“The problem is government underinvestment in transmission infrastructure for the past 25 years”, says Ray Wuslich, partner at the law firm Winston & Strawn in Washington D.C. With the US focus on fighting climate change and bringing cleaner forms of energy online, solving transmission challenges should be a top priority for the US government, industry members say. “Wind developers will say transmission capacity is the main constraint”, says Dwain Rogers, Deputy Commissioner for renewable energy at the Texas General Land Office in Austin, Texas.

A chicken-and-egg situation

With Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) across the country mandating utilities to bring more renewable energy online, transmission constraints become even more pressing. In most areas of the country, there are not enough transmission lines to bring power from rural areas – where the resources are most abundant –into populated areas.

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