FEB 11

If you want to build a wind farm in Minnesota right now, you're in for a nasty surprise. A 612-year nasty surprise in fact.

The Midwest Independent Transmission System (MISO), the organization in charge of the power lines, has to approve every new project that will connect to existing power lines. And MISO is only used to dealing with coal-plant-sized projects. Thus, the current regulations say that they must dedicate 2 years of their time to every project that will connect to the grid.

Not only that, but they're only allowed to process one application at a time.

This worked fine back when they were approving coal plants. Two years was plenty of time, and there weren't enough giant fossil fuel plants to fill their docket.

But a system that worked fine for fossil fuel has completely broken down in the face of distributed wind energy. People filing an application with MISO to build a medium- to large-scale wind project (of which there are currently over three hundred) have a heck of a wait in front of them.

So...why hasn't the system been changed yet? Obviously, if people want to build wind turbines in America, especially in the Midwest where it's windy and the land is already roaded, we should let them! But so far, the only solution they've been able to come up with is to group proposals together, pretending that ten or twenty wind farms are all the same project. It's not technically legal, but apparently it's easier than changing the law.

The problem is, even if they manage to make that work, people applying today still have to wait at least FIFTY YEARS! I think we'll probably see MISO getting some serious pressure from the federal and state governments to change their ways, and fast.

Via SolveClimate and the Star Tribune

Comments (14)

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This makes me wonder...
written by Amy, February 11, 2008

...how long it took U of MN Morris to plan/be approved for their wind turbine. They dedicated it when I was a senior, but I don't remember much discussion about it before it was built. It powers something like half the campus (which is, admittedly, pretty small)!

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no more new coal plants either!
written by Mark Bartosik, February 11, 2008

Well the good news is that it will take 612 years for them to approve another coal plant too!

Never under estimate the ability of government to screw things up badly.

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Oh! relief.
written by st.ignatius, February 11, 2008

This is welcome news. Wind turbines do not efficient make. Do some googling and discover how non-green and inefficient they really are.

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Don't connect it to the power lines...
written by PaulC, February 11, 2008

"has to approve every new project that will connect to existing power lines"
So if you build a wind powered generator and power your college or your house, and you dont give your left overs to the power grid then you don't need MISO approval, at least thats how I read it.

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Uhhmmm... you can still build a wind far
written by Paradorn Tryan, February 11, 2008

Does the author not understand how a grid works? Build your windfarm and use it for personal use but don't expect the highly complex transmission lines risking stability and reliability issues with your pinwheel schemes.

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...
written by RhapsodyInGlue, February 11, 2008

This problem is probably one that is quite widespread in various forms. Even many of the environmental regulations are being spun around and used against wind and solar projects. California, where I live, has great solar resources... along with wind and geothermal. However, environmental impact studies cause lengthy delays for projects and are often used to block needed transmission lines leading to the areas where the resources are best. I believe it will be necessary for governments to step in and streamline this process by doing large scale studies to determine suitable areas and then defining corridors for the transmission lines. It's simply too prohibitive to do this project by project. That process simply cannot scale with the growth rate of renewables.

St.Ignatius... Elvis is still alive. Do some googling, you'll find he often hangs out in small towns with space aliens.

Paul... you are undoubtedly right about offgrid systems. I don't think any of the country's transmission regulatory bodies would have any authority or interest in offgrid applications. There could potentially be other rules and red tape for offgrid from different regulatory bodies, however.

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Wow!
written by Thomas, February 11, 2008

612 years? I'd just go post my resume on http://www.computerjobs.com/us...l=1&mkt=t6 instead of waiting that long.

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...
written by Rob, February 12, 2008

Grid, schmid. I'm with Paradorn. Build your own, get off the grid. Go vertical-axis wind turbine, it's slow, cheap, and dependable. Especially if you've got a mile of prairie grass between you and the next honcho.

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...
written by RhapsodyInGlue, February 12, 2008

Rob... perfect solution!

I'm sure you've done the calculations to make sure there is enough land so that the entire population of the U.S. can live on their own huge spread of grass prairie... right?

If people living in apartment buildings or with houses with negligible wind and solar aren't willing to abandon where they live... well, they just aren't worth considering.

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...
written by Flac, February 12, 2008

Even though this doesn't keep one from using wind turbines to power their own home, the legislation obviously needs to be updated. In fact, this is just one aspect of it that is severely lagging behind the quickly changing world.

It's obvious the cities might need different power sources... but there's no lack of other renewable energy projects. E.g. the floating "energy island" etc.

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I wouldn't believe everything you read.
written by David, February 12, 2008

The idea of a 612 year wait, even a fifty year wait is hogwash. I currently live in Southern MN where wind farms are sprouting up all over the place, which makes me incredibly happy. Just this morning I read in a local paper about a 32,000 acre wind farm and yet another 5,500 acre wind farm nearby, all within a 30 minute drive of where I live. The wait time? Roughly 1 year, simply for the production of the turbines. The turbines to be installed are 1.5 and 2.5 megawatts. There will be roughly 200 turbines installed on the 32,000 acres of land. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that the local airport raised its ' minimum obstruction clearance altitude ' in an effort to aid this particular project. This project has received several grants from several different local, state and even private organizations. No money is being sought after by the land owners, and the tax of 0.12 per kilowatt is going to be given back to the landowners. This 400 megawatt farm is going to pump over $1 million back to these people. So someone please tell me, how is this a bad thing and why are people believing these ridiculous wait times?

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The Wait Is Long, But Not That Long
written by Jo Rey, February 12, 2008

It is true that there is a long wait in what MISO calls its "transmission queue", but it is not correct that each project waits in turn while full-time effort is devoted to studying it for two years. MISO handles dozens of projects at a time in various stages of the analysis process, and as the previous poster noted, you can see the results in the many wind farms (and fossil fuel plants too) sprouting up all over as they get approved for connection to the grid.

But, one interesting fact is that MISO has over 50,000 MW of wind projects in its queue, versus an installed capacity of something like 2,500 MW of wind in the entire (huge) MISO territory. The total amount of wind projects in the queue exceeds by a factor of two or three the total amount of all the various renewable mandates in all the states in the Midwest going out twenty years. It's far more than the electricity dispatchers can currently cope with to maintain grid reliability. So something in the queue analysis system has to be improved to deal with this reality, but it is fixable, and if the fixes take longer than five years, I'd be surprised.

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...
written by Corban, June 27, 2008

Generating energy for the grid is part of the payback that one gets for renewable energy projects. If you isolate yourself, then the only earnings you get come from your personal savings, and not anything extra that you put out. Telling everyone to jump off the grid will reduce supply

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Solution?
written by Ken, June 29, 2008

Since they have "to approve every new project that will connect to existing power lines." then perhaps once a new project is approved and connected, the future projects can connect to the new power lines rather than the existing ones.

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