Texas, for example, has just finished installing 3,600 miles of transmission lines to serve its vast wind farms in the Texas Panhandle and the western part of the state.
Many of the new transmission lines are serving wind farms and solar power plants built in the past decade, providing a route for renewable energy to get onto the power grid.
Wind and solar power, in addition to population shifts in cities in the West and South, are helping to drive major new investment in electric power transmission lines in the U.S., according to a new U.S. Energy Information Administration report.
After a three-decade decline, the U.S. saw a fivefold increase in investments in electric power transmission lines between 1997 and 2012, the report says. Investments increased to $14.1 billion by 2012 from $2.7 billion in 1997.
Renewables such as wind and solar are being developed partly as climate-friendly alternatives to coal-fired power plants, which are among the most significant emitters of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Wind farms have spread across the country over the past decade, driven in large part by states’ renewable energy portfolio standards while also taking advantage of a renewable energy production tax credit, which expired in 2012.
That led to growth in wind power production to 141 million megawatt hours in the U.S. in 2012, up from 4 million megawatt hours in 1999. That growth can be seen in states like Texas, which set a record for wind power production this year, when more than 10,000 megawatts were produced one day in March, more wind power than any other state had ever produced.
All the new wind farms in the U.S. required new transmission lines mainly because most of the solar and wind farms exist far from where people use the electricity generated there, according to the EIA.
Wind, Solar Boosting Investment in Power Lines
No comments:
Post a Comment