Climate Wire: An Electric Superstation ‘Game Changer’ is at FERC
You know FERC, don’t you – Federal Energy Regulatory Commission? Utility executives and public utility commissioners certainly do know FERC. On the NYTimes’s site this morning E&E Greenwire‘s Peter Behr tells the big-gadgetry lovers among us of a project that could start resolving one of the primary snags of renewable energy. That is how to get electrical power to where its needed and from such places as those that are very sunny, windy, or perhaps overlie easily reached geothermal sources. The news is of a project that could cost $1 billion. It is called the Tres Amigas Superstation. Advanced switching machinery and superconducting cables would, if it works out, link three existing grids and hook them efficiently to one another and to the rest of the country. It seems they are now, literally, out of synch so it will take some fancy transformers, de-inverters, and other stuff to more or less laundry the juice (AC-DC-and back) in a way that makes it palatable to all concerned. FERC has the proposal before its bureaucratic eyes. I can’t claim to understand its details, but it apparently has nothing to do with federal stimulus money – which I’d thought was to be a main player in redoing the grid.This is even better, they say. It supposedly will be a privately financed money maker and, presumably, tax-generator.
A search reveals several other accounts in recent weeks as the proposal headed for FERC:
- AP – Tres Amigas applies for federal approvals ;
- Reuters – Poornima Gupta: Start-up aims to move green power by connecting grids ;
Other Green Energy Business News:
- Wired – Tony Borroz: Diesel Hybrids Deliver Big Savings to UPS ; Nice piece that could have made more of the synergy between private business, DOE grants, and a national lab.
- Charlie Petit
