Bringing Remote Renewable Energy to Market

[jpak]

http://www.renewableaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=49991

Although California is blessed with some of the best geothermal, wind and solar resources in the U.S. -- as well as the policies and legislation in place to do take advantage of those resources -- a number of the renewable energy-rich areas are too far from the electric transmission grid to render them useful.

In an attempt to alleviate this dilemma, California has formed a public-private partnership called the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) to consider the feasibility of building new transmission lines to access renewable generation. The goal is to bring renewable electricity to the grid as it is generated from isolated areas of the state or possibly adjoining states.

"We've made tremendous progress developing the transmission plan to bring electricity from the wind-rich Tehachapi Mountain area to Southern California customers," explained California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Commissioner Dian M. Grueneich. "Our goal with RETI is to identify the next Tehachapi."

RETI is designed to rapidly develop renewable energy to meet the state's mandate of producing 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and goal of 33 percent by 2020. The CPUC, the California Energy Commission, the California Independent System Operator (California ISO) and representatives of publicly owned utilities, including Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), are spearheading the initiative.

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[eppur_se_muova]

1. AO!

Acronym Overload!

[XemaSab]

2. Don't worry, the CEQA/NEPA process takes so long

we won't see a DEIR/DEIS for decades. Not to mention the AFC process. :P

[losthills]

3. good

[razzleberry]

4. greenwash .n/t.

[NNadir]

5. Um, well, gee, um, you see, uhhh...

California's renewable energy share has been falling, not rising, at least for electricity:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept04ca.xls

Of course, what one actually does is not as important as what one promises.

This is why 10% of the vehicles sold in 2003 in California, as mandated by the 1990 ZEV law, are ZEV vehicles.

Now I'm going to hear some idiotic remark made about how the percentage of nuclear electricity in California has fallen too. The remark will be made no doubt by the people who have done everything in their power to prevent nuclear power from doing what it can do, not that any of these people have the moral or intellectual integrity to consider whether their prophecies are self-fulfilling or not.

Actually, the shit-for-brains Walmart executive Amory Lovins was actively predicting the demise of nuclear power in California and everywhere else on earth back in 1980.

(See Lovins, SFB, whoops I mean Amory, Foreign Affairs Fall 1980, 1137-1176, "Nuclear Power and Nuclear Bombs"

Apparently we're all still waiting, even in Benton, AR, for this to happen, for nuclear power to disappear because it's "not economic." We are all going to drive our hydrogen hypercar SUV's - which are clearly "economic" down to our local wind farm to celebrate the demise of nuclear power.

It's disappeared:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls