4/21/2009 4:35:01 PM

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By Sarah Doty

Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN 

Producing electricity is relatively easy once wind turbines are assembled, but moving that energy from the wind farm to the consumer is considerably more difficult.

	Interesting facts How using wind prevents other resources from being depleted. To generate the same amount of electricity as today's U.S. wind turbine fleet (16,818 MW), 23 million tons of coal (a line of 10-ton trucks over 9,000 miles long) or 75 million barrels of oil would need to be burned each year. -- American Wind Energy Association U.S. winds could generate more electricity in 15 years than all of Saudi Arabia's oil. -- AWEA Generating 100 kWh of wind power each month for one year has the same environmental impact as planting a half-acre of trees or not driving a car 2,400 miles.  Generating 600 kWh of wind power each month for one year is similar to removing one car from the road for that year. -- SMPPA A 100 MW wind farm will, over the course of 20 years, displace the need for nearly 1 million tons of coal, or nearly 600 billion cubic meters of natural gas. -- GE

First, the windiest locations, such as Buffalo Ridge, Minn., and the Dakotas, are hundreds of miles from large population centers. Transmission lines are needed to solve that problem, but underdeveloped transmission in rural areas complicates the effort.

"Fortunately and unfortunately, a lot of that wind development is being proposed in rural areas," said Tim Carlsgaard, communications director for the Transmission Capacity Expansion Initiative by the year 2020 (CapX2020) project. "(The transmission in those areas) was designed to meet local, rural needs, not to meet the needs of these huge wind farms."

The issue of "maxed out" power lines in certain areas also adds another obstacle to the transmission puzzle.

That is where CapX2020 and Green Power Express have come on the scene recently.

Both are high-voltage transmission lines proposed to alleviate the current problems, and to address the "lack of electric transmission infrastructure needed to integrate wind energy," according to Independent Transmission Company Midwest, which developed the Green Power Express.

Seven-state project

The Green Power Express is a 765-kilovolt project that was proposed in February that will traverse seven states, including Minnesota, "to efficiently move up to 12,000 megawatts of renewable energy in wind-rich areas to major Midwest load centers," according to the company. The estimated cost for the 3,000-mile transmission line is approximately $10 billion to $12 billion.

Currently, the Green Power Express is in the earliest stages of discussion for the project. No route studies or a siting processes have been conducted.

"What we did is, we made the public announcement and we made the federal filing, but this is a process of conversations with so many stakeholders who have an interest in seeing wind development," said Tom Petersen, communications director at ITC Midwest.

CapX2020 is a joint initiative of 11 utilities in Minnesota and the surrounding region to install four separate transmission lines across the state and region. The lines will run from Bemidji, Minn., to Grand Rapids, Minn.; from Fargo, N.D., through St. Cloud to Monticello, Minn.; from Hampton, Minn., through Rochester to La Crosse, Wis., and from Brookings County, S.D., to Hampton. The lines will carry 345 kilovolts, with the exception of the Bemidji-to-Grand Rapids line, which will carry 230 kilovolts. The cost for the lines will be between $1.4 billion and $1.7 billion.

"What we can say for sure is, that (CapX2020) is an investment that is needed for reliability, and to meet customer growth and to meet the renewable energy standard in Minnesota," said Laura McCarten, co-executive director of the CapX2020 Initiative.

The project recently received a large vote of confidence by Minnesota administrative law judge Beverly J. Heydinger after she recommended the project for approval by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

Voices in debate

However, there are others who believe the high-voltage lines aren't the answer.

"I am sympathetic with everyone that wants transmission for wind. I do too, but we know, from studies that aren't very old that Congress asked for, that running great big lines from great big wind farms with great big loads isn't the way to reduce congestion," said Kristen Eide-Tollefson, a citizen energy advocate from Frontenac. "The best way (to reduce congestion) is to have a variety of (line) sizes and projects, and site those across different wind areas."

Eide-Tollefson is also concerned with other aspects she doesn't feel were addressed in the CapX2020 Certificate of Need hearing that took place earlier this year.

"They are not committing any of the lines," she said. "They are justifying them as wind, but they will not commit any capacity to ensuring that it will be wind."

According to Petersen, Eide-Tollefson's request just isn't possible.

"We don't own generation; we don't own any wind farms; we are purely just the transmission lines, which is why we have a nondiscriminatory approach about generators," he said.

"We can't discriminate who has access to our system because we are an independent transmission company."

But the "Green Power Express," name and advertisement by both ITC Midwest and CapX2020 about transporting wind is what is making Eide-Tollefson so frustrated.

"There is a lot of green washing going on generally," she said. Allowing people to build infrastructure only half used by wind, to compete for markets that haven't been established yet, is a problem, she said.

Sigurd Anderson, who is very active in Southeastern Minnesota Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTS) and the Minnesota Project, also has concerns about who is going to pay for these lines and who is going to benefit from the money they generate.

Garwin McNeilus, who put up the first wind turbines in southeastern Minnesota, doesn't buy that argument.

"I don't buy into that at all," he said. "It benefits Minnesota if we tie our turbines into it. Why wouldn't it? I am not tracking with them. We are one country."

Dan Hayes of Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency, a member of CapX2020, says that transmission is needed badly.

"The transmission system in this country is pretty fragile," Hayes said. "It's pretty much like the highway system was before the Interstate highway system, which was a series of country roads. What it did for the economy and the country was phenomenal. What a good electricity highway system in this country could do for this economy could be equally phenomenal."

McNeilus agrees: "It is so needed it's pathetic. This is crazy -- with the technology we have today, it shouldn't be like entering a new country. We would do so much to lower our cost by upgrading that grid."

Eide-Tollefson agrees, but said the proposed CapX2020 project failed to implement the "Smart Grid" technology that is needed for such upgrades.

"We only get to rebuild our system every 30-50 years, and those are enormous investments," she said.

"The way that they have done it in the past is they overbuild and wait to catch up. But if they overbuild (this time) we won't have the money to invest to make our system more smart.

"We are over-investing in a strategy, that I don't think is a good strategy for the 21st century"

Jeremy Chipps, a La Crescent resident and member of the Citizens Energy Task Force, agrees.

"We want the clean, green energy future that President Obama has been proposing, not the large polluting power systems of the past," Chipps said.

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