Posted on 07/21/2011 10:52:09 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators laid down principles on Thursday for planning and paying for new power lines, part of a long-term policy effort to help the nation’s electricity grid grow enough to meet the demands of renewable energy and a competitive electricity market.
The rule, which has been in the works for several years, is intended to push the organizations that manage the grid into cooperating with one another, so that developers can build power lines across several states and multiple electrical jurisdictions.
Such cross-jurisdictional transmission lines are becoming more important as states seek to reach their goals of integrating large amounts of wind and solar power, generally available in remote deserts and mountaintops, into the energy mix.
While generators of power, including renewable energy advocates, generally praised the rule, others were wary and said it could impose big costs on people who get no benefits.
But it has long been clear to grid experts that the existing transmission lines will not allow for a free market in electricity in which generators can compete across vast distances to supply customers, or for meeting state renewable energy goals. Existing rules make...
--snip--
The new rule, passed unanimously on Thursday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, does not specify what the formula should be for allocating costs, or precisely how new lines should be planned. But it does lay out general guidelines, including the notion that the costs should be borne by those who benefit.
The commission also issued an implicit threat: if grid organizations do not enable the construction of badly needed new transmission lines, federal regulators will do it for them.
Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the commission, cited a prediction that until 2019, 60 percent of new generating capacity will be wind and sun, often distant from population centers...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
These increases in number of lines could be stopped by environmental rules ironically enough.
“But it has long been clear to grid experts that the existing transmission lines will not allow for a free market in electricity in which generators can compete across vast distances to supply customers...”
Well, duh!
Let’s make this crystal clear...electricity cannot be transmitted across huge expanses, period. It fades to nothing over long distances.
The Pacific Northwest would buy power from Southern California during the winter, and during the summer sell any excess power to Southern California.
BUT IT WAS NOT DONE DIRECTLY!
Such sales were accomplished through exchanges via the north-south intertie, with the cooperation of power generation stations between the Pacific Northwest and Souther California.
See: Electric Power Transmission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
Only ignorant people would posit the following: “Federal regulators laid down principles on Thursday for planning and paying for new power lines, part of a long-term policy effort to help the nation’s electricity grid grow enough to meet the demands of renewable energy and a competitive electricity market.”
Why?
Because some interties are privately owned. This is a wholesale attempt to seize private property!
This is all about power (no pun intended) and control and not about providing a critical need for taxpaying citizens. Regulations based on politics by science imbeciles, capitalizing on a voter base consisting of bigger imbeciles.
Sixty percent of new generating capacity will be wind and sun? That is an indictment of the competence of the regulators, since it confirms two things : Since the current contribution of wind and solar is under 3%, a 60 % increase is pathetic; second, it confirms the idiotic polititcal decision to stifle the exploitation of our proven domestic traditional power sources.
As a final note, the throw away comment of "often distant from population centers" underscores the ignorance of both the regulators and the snoozing consumer. The amount of energy losses is directly proportional to the transmission lengths, and is often 50%!
So how much of the subsidized 60% increase of the pathetic 5% current contribution will actual reach the user?
Rolling blackouts and brownouts are in your future.
If the bureaucrats get their tentacles around the power grid, our land will be a third world hell hole. Power will become a commodity only available to the kleptocrats and their cronies at certain hours of the day.
The cruel gall of these tyrants during the worst heat wave of the year, to take about green energy, which is a fantasy.
And here I thought it was nothing more than a move to help the billionaire in Texas build lines for his wind generator farms. Guess I was wrong!!!
Horsecrap. I'll use what I want, when I want and anyone that doesn't like it can KMA.
And I have the engineering to make it happen. Burro-crats can pound sand.
/johnny
Why do we need new power lines when we aren’t building any new power generation that amounts to anything?
At least one Power plant is being closed around here because of new regulations making it too expensive to operate.
This is about having the power to NOT provide a critical need. Imagine cutting off Minnesota or North Dakota during the Winter. Houston in mid-summer.
The ability to thaw and spoil entire frezzers full of food, freeze countless people to death, or eliminate air conditioning in hot inner cities where the usual suspects might riot against another area with power...
This is indeed about control, and that is easily abused, especially by those who might want to 'break a few eggs' to get what they want.
As for wind power on mountaintops, I've seen far more on flatlands.
I submit, if you can sell electricity across state lines, why can’t insurance companies compete?
They can compete across state lines. All states have to do is create ‘compacts’ between multiple states; this allows insurance companies to insure folks within those states which are members of the ‘compact’.
It is those state bodies, such as Medical boards afraid of losing their ‘power’, that prevent such compact agreements.
How to turn solar and wind off, as media viable renewable sources of unaffordable expense, no more than 30 percent inefficiency, taxpayer subsidized idiocy, and known foolishness, attempting to exist as something labeled good, when the opposite applies. Science be damned, stupidity full speed ahead.
get an eCat... start doing tests... approve a design for eCat based power to be used in neighborhoods or towns.
distributed power is always the best solution
to meet the demands of renewable energy and a competitive electricity market
They mean they have to run power to the Wind Mills so when there’s no wind they can make it look like they’re doing something.
You are so right about environmental objections to new lines being put in. Also NIMBY stuff creates a huge problem. PPL (Northeast PA) just wanted to expand their existing lines over their existing path and NIMBYs went nuts.
I hear that. Why buy electricity from some potentially unreliable source, when you can generate all that you could use yourself?
+1 for upgrading the power grid.
-1 that it took years to come to a decision the power grid needs upgrading. You would think the major grid failures we’ve had in the past and the chronic grid failures that persist; would have sped up the decision making process.
>>Because some interties are privately owned. This is a wholesale attempt to seize private property!<<
I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but the words “private property” carry no special definition these days. The Constitution was trashed quite a while ago along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Eminent domain is the only words that you need to know these days. Has the EPA, OSHA and the BLM been out to inspect the property which you claim is “private property”? They will be shortly. Please have your tax papers ready when the IRS agents arrive.
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