20th Century System Meets 21st Century Resources

摘要

Every year power plants having almost 1,000 GW of generating capacity provide electricity to more than 140 million customers across the US. All that power is sent across 158,000 miles of transmission lines and another 1 million miles of local distribution lines, no one is really certain of the exact number. The author traveled to Texas in late February for their annual renewable energy conference and visited the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Texas is a good place to examine the transmission issue afflicting North America. Texas has some of North America's best wind resources. For another, Texas is making good on its Competitive Renewable Energy Zone concept, which is aimed at building transmission capacity before new wind energy resources are built so the new capacity can be brought to market more rapidly.