Summary
With energy prices rising higher and higher, it appears that the United States is ready to get on board with wind power. Though the US had been unwilling to provide the subsidies necessary to get wind power going, new energy concerns are changing the picture. And, with the enormous wind resources out West, along with an increasing demand for power in the same area, Indian reservations are looking like attractive locations for wind farms.
Original source:
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410424
Details
Against a background of growing electricity prices and potential power shortages, a subcommittee in the House of Representatives heard that the time is right for tribal wind power.
''The full Resources Committee has jurisdiction both [over] the several power marketing administrations and over Indian affairs.
Spears asked for congressional assistance in gaining access for tribal wind power to the Western Area Power Association's hydropower distribution system.
Thomas Heller, chief executive officer of Missouri River Energy Services, concurred: ''I believe there is an opportunity for a new partnership.''
Hydroelectric power, drawn from water reservoirs on dammed rivers, is the backbone of conventional power generation.
Other witnesses referenced ''historical drought'' and the 2000 - 2001 conventional energy market ''collapse'' in California (triggered in part at least by a Northwest drought) as warning signs for conventional power.
Because electricity cannot be stored in commercial quantity - supply must instantly match demand for the lights to go on at the flip of switches throughout a service area - intermittency is a problem.
But it can be overcome, said Heller.
Despite subsidies of $25 billion during the previous 25 years, they never made up more than 12 percent of the state's energy supply by the most generous estimate (and much less by other estimates) - nowhere near enough to fill the gap when the so-called imbalance of supply and demand eventually caught up with the state.
Politicians may prove leery of the opportunity cost represented by
wind power investments with the California example in recent memory.
If, in this new context, integration with hydropower can cost-effectively regulate the intermittency of wind generation ''and dramatically improve the economics of that resource,'' as Heller maintained in his testimony, then any failure to invest reasonably in bringing wind power to market becomes an opportunity cost.
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Sunday, March 06, 2005
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