transmission
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How the Wall Street Journal twisted the facts on transmission
The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial, "The Great Transmission Heist," that took a swing at renewable energy. That's not surprising. What is surprising is that the piece wholly abandoned not only the facts, but fundamental market principles related to the energy sector.
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Utilities can meet EPA standards without threatening reliability
Coal utilities are trying to scare Congress into thinking that if EPA follows up with its planned regulations, electricity rates will soar and there will be reliability problems in the electricity grid. Is it true? According to a comprehensive new analysis, no.
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Transmission constraints derail solar project
Amid all the hope and hype about the nascent solar boom under way in California, there’s long been an elephant in the room — transmission. Billions and billions of dollars must be spent to build and upgrade transmission lines to connect dozens of proposed solar power plants to the grid. Now that elephant has rolled […]
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Ecosystem conservation vs. renewable-energy development: Let’s hike on it
Adam Bradley, hiking for an important cause.Sometimes the push for clean energy runs up against the push to preserve unspoiled wild areas (see: Cape Wind). Big wind farms and solar-power systems are being sited in remote and undeveloped spots, and long transmission lines are being planned to carry their output to population centers, where the […]
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Study shows transmission costs for big wind are low!
Grist recently discussed the new National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) large wind study [pdf]. This study explores scenarios for supplying 20 percent to 30 percent of total electric energy consumption used by the eastern grid through wind power. (The eastern grid serves about 70 percent of the U.S. population.) Although it was not the main […]
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Taking distributed energy seriously
This week, in The New York Times’ Room for Debate, I was involved in a discussion on the brewing war among environmentalists over building large power plants on sensitive land — specifically, in this case, a solar thermal power plant in the Mojave desert. “Green Civil War: Projects vs. Preservation” saw contributions from: Randy Udall, […]
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‘Heretic’ battles straw man
Energy Self-Reliant States [PDF], a flawed study on local Renewable Energy availability from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ISLR) found that 18 of the 50 states could not meet their electricity needs with local renewables. In fact, no state can meet its electricity demand through local renewables without expensive electricity storage. On a national basis, […]
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Solar’s rapid evolution makes energy planners rethink the grid
Photo courtesy OZinOH via Flickr California’s ambitious goal of obtaining a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 has spawned a green energy boom with thousands of megawatts of solar, wind, and biomass power plants planned for … the middle of nowhere. And therein lies the elephant in the green room: transmission. Connecting […]
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2-way connections between electric cars and grid have amazing potential that needs no exaggeration
One of the many tasks of running an electric utility is maintaining operating reserves and spinning reserves to handle seasonal peaks, and occasional generation failures. Between peak demand that only occurs a few times a year, and the occasional shutdown for routine maintenance and response maintenance, utilities have to keep operating reserves — backup equipment […]
