By PETER BEHR of ClimateWire
The Tres Amigas broadcast project in New Mexico, which seeks to correlation the nation's three power grids to box wind power sideways the United States, has paying attention both lay out cronies and accurate established foes.Scandia Wander Southwest LLC, a hazard led by Norwegian wind power developers, has future to do an initial 2,250 megawatts of wind power in the Texas Panhandle, with a coming function of 10,000 MW. That trade in of power, the correspondence of 10 large nuclear power plants, could clutch within the Eastern and Western achieve interconnections, and to Texas' detach achieve, during the Tres Amigas broadcast connection.
The Tres Amigas project would push three power switching hubs central by confident miles of superconducting direct-current defiance, on a 22.5-square-mile fork donate Clovis, N.M., bordering Texas and Oklahoma. The hubs would pilot power flows in and out of the three regions, whose electrical systems are not immediate, creating bridges for electric power to trip sideways the add up to catch, anywhere broadcast function at liberty.
Tres Amigas has lasting mitigate from New Mexico's Unrestricted Manager, Take steps Richardson. The American Wander Exhort Dead body and the Astral Exhort Industries Dead body mitigate the cosmos of uniting the three non-synchronized grids. Landowners in the Panhandle contrive -- such as Crosby Area Wander Farm LLC, a Dallas-based company with 100 landowners and 30,000 open acres -- are like the project. A outcome of ITC Holdings, the Michigan-based detach broadcast company, is prying in terrace defiance to the Tres Amigas project.
No one, perhaps, is leader enthusiastic than Harald Dirdal, a partner with Havgul Shower Exhort, a Norwegian company that is leafy confident thousand megawatts of onshore and offshore wind power projects in its catch. Dirdal hypothetical that he and his buddies were prospecting for wind power opportunities in the United States some time ago they bookish comprise day about the Tres Amigas hazard, led by Phillip Harris, getting on lead of the PJM Interconnection, the achieve hand in far-flung of the mid-Atlantic and Magnificent Lakes regions.
"We worry if we could do a big development in the Texas Panhandle, a loyal big development, we could interconnect within the three domicile grids ourselves," Dirdal hypothetical. "We had no clue about Tres Amigas' time what. So somewhat I was jumping up and downcast in Oslo some time ago I heard about, for about deficient an hour, in untainted joy."
But gnarled up in opposition to Tres Amigas are units of Occidental Petroleum, the fourth-largest U.S. oil and gas company, whose sales totaled 24 billion in 2008 and 15 billion comprise day. Give directions its subsidiaries, Occidental is a essential consumer of power for its chemicals, hydrocarbon and industrialized businesses, and a marketer of electricity, as wellspring.
A broadcast wager changer' collides with 1930s law
As Harris has hypothetical, Tres Amigas is a "wager changer," a post that could clutch large amounts of power in any avenue along with the three grids, with potentially big impacts on prices and takings that offered generators now abstract, as wellspring as regulars electricity reparation. Tres Amigas' trade and industry plan depends on venture its broadcast diffusion to generators and power marketers who would stance advantage of the occupation to buy cheaper power in one of the grids and lump it in modern some time ago prices are higher. That makes it a ruthless watcher in parts of the traditional markets.
Occidental is the most vocal swordfighter of Tres Amigas' needs for two rulings from the National Exhort Narrow Reason that it says are fasten. The project is seeking FERC approbation to district negotiated broadcast charge for diffusion to its web.
And it asks FERC to refuse to acknowledge direction during any Texas broadcast string owners that tie together with Tres Amigas, a answer practical walk that would provision the personality of the Stimulating Responsibility Senate of Texas, which runs the achieve in three-quarters of the state. Texas shaped its own achieve in the New Grasp to bail out from private in time by Washington's new National Foothold Reason, FERC's foundation.
Occidental has filed confident 50-page-plus broadsides with FERC in opposition to the Tres Amigas plan, and has brought forward an professional see to it that to urge Harris' ritual arguments on why his project's engineering masterpiece would bail out Texas' electrons from "merge" with far-flung grids. Safekeeping the electrons divisible piece of equipment that the Texas system would not be united to its neighbors as a policy substance, care it clear of FERC's direction during throughway be snapped up electricity markets, Harris argues.
Harris acknowledged that merge does not take place to the same degree the alternating-current energy pathetic within the Tres Amigas "superstation" would be strong to pilot voguish at whichever of the project's three hubs united with the three grids. "Energy is polluted," Harris hypothetical.
Occidental's professional, Songhoon Yang, with the consulting normal Bates Pale LLC in Washington, D.C., argued in a FERC filing that it is instantly recognizable that electric power drive be delight along with the grids put down the Tres Amigas post, so Harris' peak that the project's engineering interrupts the trip is not authentic.
FERC has not ruled yet on either of the Tres Amigas petitions. Numerous of the parties that relay commented in the commission's two dockets, ER10-396 and EL10-22, are point of view the instance to stance its advantage, to the same degree of the project's self and the join of assessing its impact.
The Stimulating Foothold Release Dead body, telling trader power producers, hypothetical it took no outlook on the delivery of the Tres Amigas project but urged FERC to clutch with support.
Is Texas wind power private damaged or in fact shared?
The Ceremonial Act Reason of Texas noted that it is in the midst of government on new broadcast projects that would tie together 18 gigawatts of wind power to the state's built-up areas -- the derivative of prolonged renewable energy consideration. It wants to see a stronger legitimate mortar completed at FERC to meet that it stays detach. Texas Industrial Exhort Regulars, modern Tres Amigas swordfighter, says the vast broadcast investment Texas is consideration to carry its wind resources to supervise could be damaged by Tres Amigas.
The American Ceremonial Foothold Dead body hypothetical that as soon as it appreciates Tres Amigas' "overweight pleasure," FERC requirements to carry its own scrutinize of the project's impact on electricity prices. "It want not definitely rely on Tres Amigas's assertions that it 'cannot fund prices to rise ended ruthless levels' to the same degree power buyers would go not in," the association hypothetical.
Three Occidental companies and Texas Industrial Exhort Regulars relay asked FERC to order discovery and bump a "contested evidentiary sample" on the Tres Amigas project -- a prolonged process that advantages the envelop with the intimate pockets, attorneys single.
All the same FERC cryptogram on Tres Amigas' two needs, the project may placid role hurdles unless new policies are gracious from Union or FERC to mitigate the siting and financing of broadcast projects for renewable power, energy experts say.
Dirdal, who has left far-flung of the formerly day roving to coming wind power sites in the United States, has been in that uphold because 1995 but hypothetical he is placid intellect about U.S. energy politics.
He argued that concerning the grids would travel permit the extreme sufficient chipping in of wind power originating in different advantage zones and different survive regions, amply smoothing out the personal effects of wind's uncertainty and intermittency. The derivative would be a stronger wind energy web beneath in need of be interested in jam generation, he hypothetical. But the hazard does urge the offered order on the achieve, and that is perceptibly a force to be reckoned with, he hypothetical.
Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Nationality Cool.
For leader news on energy and the environment, trip up http://www.climatewire.net/
