Grid Infastructure Investment Needed ASAP

October 16, 2007 at 3:51 pm | Posted in The Grid | 1 Comment
Tags: electricity, energy, grid, power

Anyone who thinks America’s electric grid can keep functioning without drawing power from renewable energy sources is dellusional. But figuring out how to produce clean energy is only a tiny piece of the solution to supporting a sustainable grid. The biggest issue is the lacking infastructure available to transport that energy.

A new report by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. about the national power grid says just that [see PDF of report]. The report notes that even without an increase in renewable energy, electricity use is growing twice as fast as the resources used to generate and transmit it.

That means that power companies will have to invest big in transmission technology, even if they plan to avoid clean energy altogether and operate in states that do not have legislation that requires a certain amount of their energy to come from renewable sources (see States with Renewable Portfolio Standards).

Although Sergel’s group would not provide a cost estimate for meeting this goal, the utility industry expects to spend $38.1 billion on transmission projects between this year and 2010, compared with $37.8 billion spent since 2000 — Associated Press.