With an added 100,000 MW of wind power in the next decade could supplant the need for higher-priced natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, wind advocates contend.

Buoyed by the continuing uncertainty in the future price and supplies of natural gas, wind power advocates are lobbying hard for a greatly accelerated build-up of wind turbines, and they are taking their proposals to Federal Reserve Bank head Alan Greenspan — as well as anyone in Congress who will listen to them.

A substantial investment in upgraded and new electric transmission lines to support stepped up wind-generation facilities in the Midwest and West could provide the equivalent of 3-5 Bcf/d of natural gas, which is the range of proposed new LNG imports collectively targeted for the West and Gulf of Mexico coasts, according to the Washington, DC-based American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). They have dubbed the proposal the “wind pipelines.”

“There has been a general recognition by the market that future gas prices are going to be higher than they’ve been historically,” said Jim Caldwell, AWEA’s policy director in Washington, DC. “That is very definitely in the short term the driver in the interest in wind. Longer term, the same drivers exist — environmental, fuel diversity and all that. It is clearly the run-up in natural gas prices that allows us to talk somewhat confidently about things like the wind pipelines concept.”

Caldwell said AWEA is getting some receptive listeners among Greenspan’s staff at the Federal Reserve. He said the prime role for the 100,000 MW scenario for wind and the wind pipelines to get the added power to market are designed to get policymakers’ attention and get them considering wind as a realistic option in a broader power portfolio nationally.

“We’re trying to put a face on the idea that wind means transmission,” Caldwell told Daily GPI in a recent interview. He and the AWEA-backers are trying to emphasize the “cost-effectiveness and practicality” of investing in more power transmission to move wind-generated power.

AWEA envisions the build-up in three phases, beginning with administrative — not capital expenditures — reforms to change tariffs and rules that now make it hard for wind to get adequate transmission. About 4,000 MW could be added almost immediately through these contractual changes, Caldwell said. The second phase would take more time — 3 to 5 years — and involve upgrades and de-congestion steps on existing corridors that could produce another 26,000 MW for an estimated $1 billion investment.

Finally, the longest and toughest part would be creating at least two new transmission corridors that would take 8 to 10 years, and bring an added 60,000 MW for wind power.

In terms of the initial reforms that could open up more transmission to wind, Caldwell said the industry needs to develop a “curtailable firm transmission rate” — something between the two options of firm or curtailable offered today. Another reform needed is to change the treatment of imbalance schedules for wind operators in the same manner the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) now are starting to do.

“You can have special arrangements for wind without shifting costs,” he said. “It is a matter of just not charging wind these penalties and allowing the operators to net-out the imbalances over a month’s time.”

The third phase, building two new 500 kV lines at a cost of $10 to $20 billion is the major challenge, Caldwell said. Collectively, he said, the AWEA’s proposed three phases would represent the equivalent of 5.6 Bcf/d to 8.3 Bcf/d.

“The days of $2 natural gas are gone,” said Randall Swisher, AWEA’s executive director. “What we can look forward to instead is a price range of $4 to $5/mcf, with regional shortages and occasional spikes to $6-$10. The hardship this could wreak on consumers is severe. By contrast, wind energy is renewable and its cost from year to year is very stable. In addition, it works well in tandem with natural gas generation.”

Nevertheless, critics of wind cite its lack of 24/7 reliability, but Caldwell brushes that aside, noting that wind would have to get to be 25% to 30% of the power mix before added risk to the national grid’ reliability could become a real factor.

“Wind is like anything else (nuclear, coal, etc.), it has a capacity value,” Caldwell said. “The capacity value is clearly not nameplate, but it is reliable and produces energy more than 80% or 90% of the time. California has had 2,000 MW of wind in its system for 15 years, and you can’t find any extra cost that is associated with doing that.”

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