The North American electrical grid functions much like the US highway system, but instead of cars and trucks, there are electrons carrying electrical energy. Blackouts, brownouts, and price spikes have recently occurred due to the grid being pushed beyond its limits.Īnyone who has driven in rush-hour traffic on the roadways in a major city has experienced a grid being pushed beyond its limit. The current grid, which can barely handle the power it currently is expected to transmit, is ill suited to moving vast amounts of electricity from one region to another. The key is to build a grid that can transmit power long distances efficiently, so that the states with significant renewable resources can export their power to the more populated states. Currently, almost no correlation exists between a region’s potential to develop wind power and the amount of wind power actually developed. In contrast, demand is high in Washington, and high-voltage power lines run across the state, most of them built by the federal Bonneville Power Administration to bring hydropower to the population centers. The reasons that South Dakota has so few wind farms are that demand for electricity is low there and there are no transmission lines to export the power elsewhere. South Dakota has made use of less than 0.1% of its wind capacity, however, compared with about 13% for Washington. Those numbers take into consideration that the turbines only produce power when the wind is blowing. That Washington can capture three times as much wind power is shocking when one compares the energy capacity of the two states: South Dakota, the fourth windiest state in the US, has enough windy areas to support 882 000 MW worth of wind turbines, which could generate as much electricity as 410 nuclear plants, or 87% of all the electricity generated in the US in 2009. Those numbers come from the NREL, which considered only sites where the wind blows often enough for the turbines to be cost-effective and excludes inappropriate areas like cities and wilderness. As of 2010 South Dakota had installed 784 megawatts of wind turbines, compared with Washington’s 2357 MW. For example, compare Washington State with South Dakota.
As can be seen in the maps from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), it is windiest in the plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, and sunniest in the Southwest.Ĭurrently, renewable energy projects are not built where the best resources are, but where the transmission lines are. The main problem with renewable energy sources is that of location: The plant must be built where the energy is-where the wind blows or the Sun shines-and then the electricity produced needs to be transmitted to where the demand is. Wind and solar plants are also expensive to build, but they have very low operating costs, do not pollute, and are very unlikely ever to require the evacuation of a city. Also, nuclear plants are incredibly expensive to build, and the problem of storing the highly radioactive waste remains unresolved.Īnother alternative is renewable energy, such as wind and solar. The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mindset makes it difficult to build nuclear plants near the cities where the power will be used. Unfortunately, nuclear power has a number of drawbacks, chief among them negative public perception. Nuclear plants can be built anywhere and the fuel brought to them, just like a coal plant. One alternative energy source is nuclear power. Do we want to invest in keeping those dinosaurs functioning, or should we just replace them with something that is sustainable into the 22nd century? However, according to data from the US Energy Information Agency, as of 2008 most of the coal-burning plants are 30–50 years old. Existing technology could reduce most of those emissions. In addition, coal burning emits a large number of other pollutants, such as mercury (a neurotoxin), sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and particulates. The grid’s number one source of power is the burning of coal, which is also the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the grid is also killing us, silently and slowly. Electricity is such a critical component of modern life that we use the phrase “living off the grid” as a sign of extreme separation from society, as in, “The Unabomber lived off the grid in a cabin in Montana.” For those reliant on electrically powered medical equipment, a reliable power source is a matter of life and death. For most of us, we can’t do our jobs without electricity. We rely on the grid for heating our homes, keeping our food cool, and powering our TVs and computers.
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