Clean Power Plan Does Not Require "A Tangled Mess of Hulking, Long-range Transmission Lines"

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette's "Power Source" energy news believes the Clean Power Plan will require "a tangled mess of hulking, long-range transmission lines."  Not true, and the report's "facts" are fallible.

The reporter seems to rely on energy platitudes, pasted together with quotes from people who should have been asked about the conclusions the reporter made.

Such as:

Opponents used some of those arguments to successfully derail the Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline, a 290-mile line from Putnam County, W.Va., to Frederick County, Md., proposed by Allegheny Energy in 2008. The Greensburg company, acquired by FirstEnergy in 2011, suspended the project after it could not convince regulators the line was necessary.

This guy calls up Steve Herling, but doesn't bother to ask him why PJM terminated the PATH project.  It's not that "opponents" proved there was no need in any state regulatory process.  It's that PJM first suspended, and later terminated the PATH project because

PJM staff reviewed results of analyses showing reliability drivers no longer exist for the project throughout the 15-year planning cycle. The analyses incorporated the continued trends of decreasing customer load growth, increasing participation in demand response programs and the recent commitment of new generating capacity in eastern PJM.

This reporter also seems to be under the impression that all transmission opposition comes from "citizens groups" who oppose transmission due to environmental reasons.

While citizen groups have fought transmission projects — often successfully — by attacking the developer’s need to build them, the environmental regulations could usher in more projects and complicate opposition.

Changing drivers of transmission

In the past, environmental groups have glommed onto transmission battles and used citizen group opposition to fuel the push on environmental grounds.  Those days are over.  This reporter seems to be the last to find out, but environmental groups are the newest and biggest fans of transmission lines.  Numerous environmental groups have intervened in favor of big, new transmission lines that the wrongly believe are "for wind."  Transmission lines are open access and it's not possible to segregate "clean" electrons from "dirty" ones.  The citizens are on their own here and that's just fine... nobody needs or wants a hypocritical environmental NGO championing eminent domain for "clean" transmission lines while simultaneously using the same issue as a reason not to build "dirty" pipelines.  Nobody takes these fools seriously anymore.  Without an army, the environmental groups are simply Don Quixote.  Tilting at their beloved windmill fantasy, but getting nothing accomplished.

It's still about need though.  And the transmission poster child the reporter chose to use is not part of any regional transmission plan and therefore has not been designated "needed."

Transmission companies see big potential for new projects, particularly from sparsely populated areas that generate wind energy to urban areas. “Just as trains carried cattle and other goods from the rural areas to urban centers, the Plains & Eastern Clean Line will carry renewable energy from the Plains of the Southwest,” states the website of one developer, Clean Line Energy of Houston, Texas.

Clean Line expects federal approval for its 700-mile Plains & Eastern Clean Line, designed to carry 4,000 megawatts of power from wind farms in the panhandle of Oklahoma. The line will terminate near Memphis, Tenn. Clean Line has four other projects in the pipeline.

“We anticipate a very busy 2016,” said company president Michael Skelly. 

And that's why Clean Line is attempting to use an untested part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act to usurp the siting and permitting authority of states and ram its project through using the federal eminent domain authority of federal power marketers.  Except that statute requires a need for the transmission in the first place.  And there is none.  Clean Line elected not to participate in the regional transmission planning processes that determine need for transmission projects.  Clean Line is nothing but a gamble -- the investors are gambling that a need for the project will develop if they can build it... but Clean Line hasn't been successful in signing up any potential customers... because they can't get their project built... because there is no need for it.  That's the real chicken/egg the reporter should be examining.

I do hope Mr. Skelly is very busy in 2016... polishing up his resume and looking for new investors for his next get rich quick scheme.

The reporter longs for

...some wind mills and solar farms in areas with constant breeze and abundant sunshine

But he's looking in the wrong place.  Even though he had a conversation with Scott Hempling about non-transmission alternatives, none of that seemed to sink in.

There's an area with "a constant breeze" located much closer to Pittsburgh than the Great Plains.  It's called the Atlantic Ocean, where wind potential is much greater.  Best of all, very little "tangled mess of hulking, long-range transmission lines" would be "necessary to bring that renewable power from the point of generation to utilities for local distribution."

Why can't eastern states boost their own economies by harvesting renewables close to load?  The days of centralized generation are over.  Also, sunshine is abundant anywhere -- no transmission lines needed to slap some solar panels on your own roof.

This reporter needs some education.

1.  Transmission opposition by "citizens groups" won't change because of the Clean Power Plan.

2.  Speculative transmission projects for which there is no need shall not be granted state eminent domain authority to take property for rights of way.

3.  Clean Line is a merchant transmission project, not part of any transmission plan and completely unlike most other transmission projects.  Therefore, it should not be lumped in with them or used as an example of anything transmission-related.  If the CPP requires transmission, it will be planned and ordered by regional transmission organizations so that there is some surety that it will actually be built.  Clean Line is not needed, may never be built, and is driven by anticipated profits selling energy into more expensive markets, not by the Clean Power Plan.

And stop drinking the big wind koolaid.  There are no facts in it.