Green Energy Transmission

I’m sure when most of us think of wind power, we envision a lot of windmills in a giant flat plain, with the wind howling away. However, all those plains are in the West, not the lumpy, bumpy eastern third of the United States where I grew up. Ever thought about what to do with the wind energy, or how to transport it to the East?

Next on the agenda of green energy is high-voltage transmission lines. John Carey at BusinessWeek reported on whether or not the U.S. should subsidize high-energy voltage lines for Green energy. Harry Reid – when he’s not working on a healthcare bill – likes the idea, and wants to expand the power line system to transport wind energy, and more importantly for a politician like Reid, to create jobs in Nevada, his constituent state.

Who pays for this?

We all do, through increases in our electricity bills. Liberals will like this one: collective cost sharing and more jobs. Governor Mark Parkinson of Kansas is pushing high-voltage transmission lines to transport wind energy from his flat state. Oregon is aIso a state hot on the wind energy bandwagon. I searched all over the Department of Energy’s website to find out about how the wind power will get to locations not near the supply of wind. Nothing yet.

What about the counter idea that every idea or new company pays for itself?

Believe it or not, there are wind and alternative energy companies in the East. But the power is more expensive to produce. Should we ship cheaper wind energy from the West via the new lines or build more sites in the East, where the unit cost is higher? Which way will this issue go? Usually, given a Democratic administration and the popularity of Green Energy, I’d place my bet on Uncle Sam picking up the tab for the new infrastructure.

But the Obama administration is starting to take heat for the mammoth sized budget deficits, troops are needed in Afghanistan, and there are only so many dollars to go around.

Even T. Boone Pickens put his wind farm on hold, so I’m willing to bet we’ll be waiting a while longer for the new green wires.