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twitterThe problem with renewable energy in Nevada
We’ve got abundant land and sunlight, and powerful wind currents. But there’s a roadblock.
Tiffany Brown
Power lines are silhouetted Thursday near the Hoover Dam. The economic stimulus bill includes $3.2 billion for low-cost loans to build lines to carry renewable energy.
Sunday, March 8, 2009 | 3 a.m.
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Washington — Years from now, when Nevadans wonder why their state and others abandoned coal plants in favor of renewable energy, they are likely to remember these days.
Washington is moving aggressively if sometimes in unseen ways to remake the nation’s energy landscape. Intricate pieces of legislation are unfolding on Capitol Hill that would radically alter the nation’s energy policy, one bill at a time.
The big-ticket items are well known: cap-and trade legislation, for example, which would put a price tag on carbon emissions; a bill requiring that more of the nation’s energy come from renewable sources, as President Barack Obama promises.
But lesser known bills have the potential to shift the country sharply away from fossil fuels and, in the process, transform entire landscapes in Nevada and elsewhere in the West.
Last week, plans for one of two massive coal plants in Nevada’s White Pine County were put on hold. The other plant was similarly postponed weeks earlier.
If the nation’s energy policy is like an ocean liner trying to make a U-turn, here are pieces of legislation quietly guiding the ship.
Tucked into the economic stimulus bill is a $3.2 billion provision championed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that gives power companies in Nevada and elsewhere access to low-cost government loans to build transmission lines to carry renewable energy.
The lines are necessary to connect new power sources in desert solar fields and atop remote hilltop wind farms to the nation’s electric grid, a problem that has long vexed renewable energy developers.
Investors are reluctant to finance power lines until renewable energy companies are up and running. But renewable energy producers can’t persuade investors to put up money for plants until they know the electricity will indeed be shipped across a power line.
It’s a chicken-egg problem that in the past has largely looked to a single solution: Coal.
NV Energy and other large companies knew they could pay for transmission lines by building coal-fired generators. Coal power plants are cheap and reliable energy producers that can turn out enough energy immediately to fill up new transmission lines, providing the revenue to repay the cost of building those lines.
Paying back loans for transmission lines is far more difficult if the power comes from solar, wind and other boutique sources. Those industries are still in their infancy and will need years to mature to the point that they can fill new transmission lines.
But the equation changes with the government now providing lower-cost financing for transmission lines, which can cost up to $2 million a mile.
The stimulus bill provides $3.2 billion in bonding authority for transmission lines that would carry mostly energy from green sources. The money will be available through the Western Area Power Authority, a federal agency that coordinates and oversees construction of transmission lines.
Suddenly, building a $500 million, 250-mile power line between Las Vegas and Ely mainly to carry renewable energy makes more financial sense.
Obama, in his address to Congress last month, proclaimed, “We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country.”
Three weeks ago, as Obama’s $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was making its way through Congress, NV Energy announced it was shelving coal. Last week, LS Power, which had proposed the other coal plant near Ely, followed suit.
But the companies say they will press on with their transmission line proposals — each is trying to build what would be Nevada’s first north-south trunk line.
Tony Sanchez, a vice president of NV Energy, said the federal stimulus funding did not influence NV Energy’s decision to abandon coal.
Running renewable energy on the transmission line pencils out better today than it did even a few years ago as more and more renewables companies are sprouting and potentially seeking a spot on the line.
“In 2006 there weren’t as many developed renewables as today,” Sanchez said.
But having financing potentially available to help develop the transmission line, he added, is a great opportunity.
LS Power said last week that its transmission line is shovel-ready, ready for groundbreaking this year, bringing 20,000 direct and indirect construction jobs — just what Obama ordered in the stimulus.
Nearly 90 wind projects alone are waiting in a queue at the Western Area Power Authority to join the grid. In the past, the agency required the companies to provide the money upfront. Now, it will be in the business of lending it out, with the companies responsible for repaying the federal government after they open for business.
Tom Darin, an energy transmission attorney at Western Resource Advocates, sees the $3.2 billion as one more piece of a puzzle falling into place, shifting the country’s policy away from coal and toward renewable energy.
“The notion that we need coal to pair with wind to make it economically viable is fading,” Darin said.
“That is a significant movement away from where we were a year ago.”
Government financing of transmission lines will likely help to propel an industry by removing a sizable amount of investor risk.
Yet, energy developers still must contend with NIMBYism as residents may protest new power lines crisscrossing their communities.
To push aside this long-standing problem, Reid has stepped up with another bill. Introduced last week, the legislation would give the federal government sweeping new authority to situate the power lines by exercising the power of eminent domain over private property, if necessary.
Reid’s bill encourages states to develop renewable energy zones, and chose where power lines would go. But if they don’t, the feds could step in through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The commission’s acting chairman is Jon Wellinghoff, a one-time renewables energy expert in Nevada whom Reid recommended to the commission.
In many ways, Reid’s effort resembles the federal government’s authority to develop natural gas pipelines from the Gulf Coast states to transport the resource to customers across the nation.
But one big difference is clear: Gas lines are typically underground, while power lines hang overhead.
In Nevada, eminent domain may not bring as much protest as elsewhere because so much land in the state is owned by the federal government.
Reid’s office says the new federal powers would cut in half the eight to 16 years it typically takes to build a transmission line.
“We’re going to move beyond where one state can hold that up forever,” Reid said at an energy summit he hosted last month in Washington. “As we did with railroads, we did with highways, as we did with the telegraph, there may become a time when the federal government will step in.”
The legislation is expected to be rolled into a broader energy bill making its way through Congress. That bill will likely contain another crucial element of the energy policy transformation — the mandate that states receive a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources, as Obama wants.
Greg Williams, a former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission attorney now in practice at the law firm Bracewell Giuliani, said the shift in energy policy that is under way in the stimulus funding and the transmission line bill is an effort to reverse the 100-year history of the federal government’s reluctance to build an energy grid.
“It’ll be a big deal if they do it,” Williams said. “The energy legislation they’re proposing is historic. The fact the majority leader is sponsoring this thing is all you need to know.”
Discussion: 31 comments so far…
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Stop all energy in America. Don't build power lines near me. No nuclear dump in Nevada. No trespass on the delicate desert for solar. Stop it all. Why are my rates going up? Why is gas no free or cheap? Let's vote a price cap on gasoline of a dollar a gallon. We can have everything if we just believe and hope. Pray to the White House, it will all be better tomorrow when the stimulus arrives.
Electricity is electricity. This makes it clean too.
"Yet, energy developers still must contend with NIMBYism as residents may protest new power lines crisscrossing their communities. To push aside this long-standing problem, Reid has stepped up with another bill. Introduced last week, the legislation would give the federal government sweeping new authority to situate the power lines by exercising the power of eminent domain over private property, if necessary.
"
Can't believe the Las Vegas Sun is going to throw the word NIMBY at some people who don't want their land stolen through eminent domain. You actually think the post liberal new "green" trend is going to go anywhere if you call people who want to keep their property NIMBY's? Should we all just donate our life savings to T-Bone Pickens so the energy wasting lazy city people can feel better about their carbon footprint? I sure hope Harry Reid's home in Searchlight will have to be bulldozed for a powerline. Why do I get the feeling that Harry would strongarm the developers if that were the case?
Harry Reid and anybody who pushes eminent domain down the throats of Americans are fools. Energy can be developed on the roof tops and locally in cities. Reid, Pickens and Obama need to rethink thier un American, environment destroying "green" energy nonsense. This crap is anything but green and it uses eminent domain. It will also sky rocket your power bill. There are better ways. Write your senator and tell them to oppose Reid's eminent domain bill and do NOT vote for that nimrod in 2010!
Bighorn-
You are the biggest NIMBY out there. Your posts usually link to your website about not building ANYTHING. Why did you leave it off your post this time? Is it because you don't want those who read your comments to know you are the NIMBY Elf King who thinks we can power our society with fairy dust?
www.basinandrangewatch.org
You name call, but you have nothing meaty to say, Onion. Try doing some research...
When did become liberal to support government the taking private property? That does not really seem liberal, conservative or libertarian. I think eminent domain is a very pesky detail that will keep coming up in this new green collar plan. Pretty soon the boys in charge are not going to be able to shove this issue under the rug in the name of a green economy. Climate change will lose its political capital when properties start getting siezed. The media will have a field day with this one. Is Reid trying to commit political suicide? In the long run, this kind of NIMBY accusing will not help solve issues of energy independence or climate change. I'm starting to think the so called liberals in charge are just using that image to reinvent a governmnet with far less freedoms than before. Not buying the green song and dance anymore. It aint workin'...
If America would have spent the 2 trillion on electric infrastructure instead of the war in Iraq, we would already be well on our way to total independence of foriegn oil. Gas would now be less than a dollar a gallon, and the Mid east could drink their oil.
I love it. You think your electric prices will go up if we don't build solar, wind, and transmission lines hundreds of miles all over the place. Did you watch Meet the Press today? No one could deny the estimate that energy prices will go up $1300 per family by 2012 because of the added cost of building all these transmission lines, inefficient wind and solar plants way out in remote locations. We are basically going to tax our future to pay for replacing coal. Notice how the article refers to "cheap and reliable coal." What does that imply about wind and solar? Expensive and not baseload.
There are more advanced ways that we could bring our energy future up-to-date, by getting the government to have feed-in-tariffs for rooftop solar. In San Jose Chevron and BofA funded this for the school district. No expensive powerlines stretching across states. I was reading an MIT technology magazine about how shortly fuel cells in your basement may be able to store solar power from rooftop photovoltaic panels, to power your car and appliances. There are other options that the Harry Reid and press are not telling us.
Solar and wind can not provide reliable 24/7 energy.
Therefore, we will have to have reliable duplicate power sources from reliabe 24/7 energy like coal, natural gas and nuclear.
Solar and wind are expensive because they do not run 24/7 and you have to run power lines to scatter remote regions.
They are going to raise taxes on coal and natural gas.
Since they are not building coal and Obama hates nuclear then they will have to build natural gas to provide the reliable 24/7 power.
Natural gas has big swings in prices.
All these actions will radically increase our power bills and all the cost of goods and services.
When this happens, I am sure all the libs will say, "Who me? I dunno known nothing."
We need to be energy independent until these alternate sources are viably up and running. The only inexpensive way to do this is with COAL.
9ballguy, truer words were never spoken, too bad common sense didn't get elected.
I have been pitching friends on the idea of solar panels dropping in price, upon eventual mass production of them. Scale it up like an Intel CPU, I'll bet they then come into affordability range for tens of millions of houses -- found a cool website; Balkingpoints.com -- awesome satellite camera view of earth
Any energy source by any power company must have (and does have) capital cost for transmission lines. That is exactly why the only current economic energy sources avaliable are dominated by non-solar and non-wind companies. I wish it wasn't so either, but that is the hard cold dollar facts. Like jfinance32 says, if you can make wind and solar economic by producing solar power 12 hrs a day and producing wind power on windless days, and pay for all the infrastructure to transmit that power then lets start building. Would you buy an electric car without a driveline?
If the HOA's would allow us to put up solar panels in Las Vegas energy could be produced and used on site. I have tried since October to get my HOA to allow it with nothing but resistance. They will never allow it. They are nothing more than a dictatorship that I pay every month. What we need is a homeowner bill of rights in Las Vegas that allows us to fight the HOA's.
If you all (including the author) can predict the future so well, why are we in the mess we are in?
I suspect there will not be may people saying, gee is wish we had build that coal power plant because we will be getting our power from other than fossil fuel.
The problem with renewable energy in Nevada is lack of education, imagination and leadership and that is changing are changing. Thermal solar can provide power 24/7 (look it up) and nobody here mentioned geothermal energy which is being used in northern Nevada.
Ya'll just like to complain and whine; but you are the minority.
"Thermal solar can provide power 24/7 (look it up)"
There are zero commerical large thermal solar plants that can provide 24/7 energy.
Name one.
The largest thermal solar plant in the world is just southwest of Vegas.
During the summer it can provide about 16-18 hours of coverage if the sun is shining and it has a expensive storage system.
During the fall, winter and spring months it provides less coverage.
Bighorn-
I apologize for the name calling, I'm just tired of your short sighted attitude regarding transmission and large scale utility projects. I don't believe you ever mentioned your opposition (in this publication at least) to the coal plants being proposed in Nevada and I certainly don't remember any comments from you on the water pipeline proposed by SNWA. Those projects will have a far greater impact on our planet then renewable energy facilities.
And Jfnance- what will you ever do when the solar thermal projects with thermal storage come on line in three years (faster than a coal plant) and you are proven wrong? And if you mention costs here, DON'T. Coal with carbon capture and nuclear are FAR MORE EXPENSIVE (not even figuring in the costs of externalities). It makes me sad to think you might just self-implode in frustration about being wrong. Surprised that hasn't happened yet with the recent announcement about Yucca Mtn.
(What to do with all that poisonous, dangerous, security threatening waste from your "clean" nuclear energy?)
Some ideas on transmission and clean energy:
1. Let's start handling transmission of electricity, and electricity markets, the way we handle telecommunications in this country. About 10 years ago we started deregulating telecomm and creating a truly competitive marketplace where the idea of "long distance charges" is becoming a thing of the past. I would spend $.30 a minute in the early 90's just to call my parents from college. I can now spend less than $20 a year to have unlimited long distance. I think we will be saying the same thing about distributive solar and wind generation in 10 years, that is, it will be so cheap that everyone can afford it. But this won't power all of our factories, and solar pv won't work as well on a cloudy day. We need back-up.
So what about back up for solar, includng pv on rooftops, and wind?
2. Just over 10 years ago the internet was just taking off and we invested billions of tax dollars in helping develop the infrastructure. Accessing the internet was expensive, but every year, the price came down. Now we're accessing free WiFi in most major cities and paying a pittance to actually have access at our home or office. If we connect our nation's grid and modernize it, something we should have started 20 years ago, and then we start adding clean, low-carbon, no cost fuel, renewable energy to this grid, we can start to achieve real energy independence and security. There will be a "network" of energy choices across the country to choose from, instead of relying on one utility and their profit margins. We can begin backing off old, polluting coal plants and decommissioning nuclear plants that have cost taxpayers billions to construct, insure, and deal with the waste (10 billion on Yucca alone. Just look at past budgets and the subsidies, and don't forget The Price Anderson Act that puts TAXPAYERS at the hook for dealing with clean up.
3. CSP uses far less water than coal or nuclear, and when you add storage, like they are doing in Spain, then you address most of the intermittency of CSP. As for wind turbines, you do need a lot of them, and they don't blow everywhere all the time. BUT, if you have CSP in the West and wind in the Midwest, geothermal throughout the north, some tidal energy off the coasts, and whatever else we develop elsewhere, you then tie it all together on a smart grid to manage energy nationally. Wind in from the Great Plains can firm up solar in the Mojave, while we transport baseload geothermal from the Great Basin to the East Coast. This will also relieve our dependence on FOREIGN OIL and security threats to our local energy supplies.
Some will always oppose transmission, others renewable energy (not sure why),and they are entitled to their opinions. But to spew false rhetoric about costs, environmental impacts, and reliability, before the technology even has a chance to be really deployed, well, you just sound like a bunch of naysayers, sort of like the horse and buggy crowd, or the anti space program folks who still think the moon landing was staged.
Nobody will have a silver bullet here guys, but if we don't act now, and that means supporting leaders like Reid who have the courage to try and help, then we're in for a real disaster... and by disaster, I mean global climate destabilization.
Jfnance-
CSP w/ storgae is WAY cheaper than carbon capture and sequestration for coal, and will be deployed regularly w/in 2-3 years.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/...
"Ausra's twist is "thermal storage." In addition to generating steam from its array of special metal tubes, Ausra stores hot water that a power plant can draw on during times when the sun is not shining.
That thermal storage is key to competing on price even at peak demand times, said Robert Morgan, the chief development officer of Ausra, who spoke on Tuesday.
The company's system, which is now testing in Australia, can operate at 10 cents per kilowatt hour for plants between 100 and 200 megawatts. For plants between 200 and 500 megawatts, the cost goes down to 8 cents per kilowatt hour, said Morgan
That means they can compete with existing natural gas plants, which operate at 12 cents per kilowatt hour, he said.
"With thermal storage, we can compete with coal on price," he said. Coal-fueled plants are typically the cheapest sources of power."
and here is a picture, b/c I figured you do better with images:
http://www.sandia.gov/Renewable_Energy/s...
I'm out... going see Watchmen. I'd suggest some time away from the keyboard, maybe you should hit the links, nice day out and all.
Some keys things that you left out about the Ausra's plant. It is only a 1 mega-watt plant for the first thing. It is a test plant.
1. They are storing the energy in the form of steam and requires tons and tons of water. I do not think that will work for Nevada or California.
2. To be cost effective, their steam has to be feed into an existing coal fire plant to turn the steam power turbines there.
3. They still do not claim that it will provide 24/7 coverage.
Does anyone find great hypocrisy with Harry Reid's transmission line bill and his stance on Yucca Mt?
He apparently has no problem with using federal government emminent domain to seize American's property for something he, personally, considers a "higher good" ["Reid's bill encourages states to develop renewable energy zones, and chose where power lines would go. But if they don't, the feds could step in through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission."].
However, for something he doesn't consider to be in his (and Nevada's interests), NIMBY is alive and the federal government is suddenly the villain. Obviously, Harry could care less that millions of people live directly adjacent to power plants with tons of spent fuel sitting next to them. The idea that the waste in pools is somehow invulnerable to terrorism (and can remain there indefinitely) is a joke, but an idea perpetuated by Reid and his cadre of public relations sycophants (ie, the Las Vegas Sun).
Being a US citizen, I am so happy that a wacky little lawyer from Searchlight is determining US energy policy, and that he can do this without debate through backroom, pressure politics. What a complete dick!
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have....The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."--Thomas Jefferson
In the 70's they said solar would never work because the utility companies could never figure how to shade the sun from your home and charge you to receive the sun. The power companies will get around that today by building solar power plants and then saying we need the power lines across our lands to supply the energy. They can't shade our homes so they are just going to take them via eminent domain.
The solution is rooftop solar and FIT legislation that allows homeowner to be paid to feed the grid. When homeonwers can supply the grid from their homes, two things happen. Conservation at home - The more homeowners save, the more they earn as they feed the grid. And we will be free of destructive and unecessary high voltage transmission lines where they are unecessary.
Nance-
The Ausra quote was just a reference to cost with solar thermal, stand alone, not with a coal plant. It isn't being done in the US on scale, YET.
But Solar Millenium is doing it in Spain, and they're looking to build in Nye County with NV Energy, using existing water rights:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-...
Ultimately, it will come down to how much value policymakers and consumers put on electricity that is renewable and emissions-free. "If we start valuing carbon and force a coal plant to go carbon-free via sequestration then we're at or over 10 cents per kilowatt-hour from coal," Mancini says. "Any of these technologies can get to that same 10 cents level with [molten salt] storage. Then the market will make the call."
Of course, the 10 cents figure for coal is wrong because that assumes coal will remain cheap to purchase (which it won't) based on accessible supplies (which have been GROSSLY exaggerated by the coal industry). The future cost of coal-fired power, with a carbon tax, is around $.18 per kilowatt. The cost of coal with CCS, an unproven technology that requires lots of water and a vast system of pipelines to transport the CO2, starts around $.16 per kilowatt - though I don't believe the figure that is mentioned considers pipelines.
http://scienceblogs.com/energy/2008/09/t...
So yes, CSP with thermal storage at 200 MW will use water and cost between $.9 and $.12 cents per kilowatt.
A 200 MW coal plant with CCS will use a great deal more water, still have have emissions (the dig and the delivery both require lots of fuel) and will cost at least $.16 per kilowatt.
The market will prevail, even if CSP is not baseload, because efficiency will help out a lot on costs and energy use. Plus with a smart grid, we can buy cheap geothermal or wind to firm up our evening and morning energy use.
LOL.....Coal will not be cheap......because it will be tax by Obama.
Nearly 50% of our power comes from coal.
Obama is going to raise taxes on everybody in the USA during a deep recession.
Onion never really explained why using all the roof tops in Vegas would not be an alternative to CSP plants. Just because you are addressing an issue of one development does not automatically mean you support the SNWA water grab! Even if a CSP plant uses less water than Yucca, 5 acre feet per megawatt is still not going to work in rural areas of Nevada that have already claimed the water. Bighorn never said he/she is for yucca or coal,just pointed out the stupidity of spending so much effort to develop water resources when using photovoltaics would be more cost effective and less environmentally destructive. At least that's what I get from that web site.
This BS about, if you don't want solar, you love coal really makes Onion's lack of expertise bring tears to one's eyes! The NIMBY judge and jury and armchair enviros are running around without their leashes! I agree with Bighorn. Onion does not seem to know too much.
jfnance
The total is 68.79% of the USAs energy that comes from all the fossil fuels, not just coal, and this figure is set to rise in the coming years.
Sunlizard-
1. Rooftop solar will play a role in the next 10 years, but it won't replace baseload and will only solve the energy issues for the location it is serving. In some rare cases you will see pv provide generation for the grid, such as the Sempra project in BC, but it still doesn't compete with CSP for sheer load service and storage of electrons is prohibitively expensive. Batteries and air pressure can not compete with CSP and thermal storage on cost or scale. Unfortunately, we don't have decades to solve the global climate crisis (we already pissed that away) and so we must make compromises in order to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. As for rural water, there are plenty of lease options for rural water rights holders when they are faced with "use it or lose it" Western water laws. They will lease, and they will profit. End of story.
2. Transmission in urban centers is not sufficient to handle a large influx of payback from distributive energy systems. You will also have to address the cost of solar pv installations, which currently make the technology unattainable for most homeowners, especially in this credit market. Long term, yes, we will find a way.
3. The reference to Bighorn's lack of concern in these comment pages for the pipeline and coal plants is based on fact. Just click on their name and look at all of their comments (I did) and I can tell you, they only complain about large-scale renewables and transmission.
4. I never correlated "anti CSP" with "must love coal"--- though I would argue that nance fits this description. I'm sure Bighorn is a big opponent of any environmentally destructive technology, I just think they are misguided about CSP and the transmission needed to transmit it to load centers. I believe we can build transmission responsibly and mitigate the impacts as best as possible.
5. I think we will eventually move to a distributive, low-carbon society in the next 50 years. The bridge from coal-based energy to this vision will require some temporary compromises on transmission and land-use. Remember, we have been a big contributor to the problems we face, and we will continue to bare the burdens of these mistakes, even as we seek out solutions. This is not about us, but future generations, who will be employed to take down transmission and large-scale renewable projects, restore wild lands. We owe them a chance to survive, and that mean solving the climate crisis before it's too late.
There really is only one simple solution to the problem.
Independent Energy Every structure in the Nation should be producing there own energy with either Solar, Wind, or some kind of a perpetual motion device turning a AC Alternator.
If I had some HOA trying to stop me from going off the Grid by installing Solar I would do the install anyway and then take them to court when they start crying.