Public Power - October 2008 - (Page 28)

An Energy Revolution to the U.S. Department of Energy. General Electric Co. believes smart turbines and a smart grid will push that higher still, up to 30 percent. As advanced materials and geometries enable bigger blades, for instance, embedded intelligence will allow those blades to flex in high winds, “shedding wind” so turbines needn’t be shut down entirely. Greater regional coordination will also allow utilities to tap into neighboring generators and their grids when there is a ramp-down in one area. Still, the obstacles to broad deployment of these new energy technologies remain daunting. The risk premium, for starters, is unusually high. To prove these cuttingedge technologies at scale will require more time and money than venture capitalists have generally been willing to provide. That bigger money, meanwhile, is still on the sidelines, discouraged by the continual wavering by Congress and its re- Models 6472 / 6474 The only Ground Resistance Tester capable of accurately testing transmission towers without disconnecting the overhead ground conductor Conduct Fall of Potential tests and automatically plot the results Conduct Resistance vs. frequency scans Compact Bond Resistance tests Test ground impedance on lightning protection systems using higher frequencies up to 5kHz Conduct Soil resistivity tests Conduct Earth Coupling tests Conduct Step and Touch potential tests Conduct Ground Resistance testing using the two clamp method Store all results in memory and automatically generate reports and graphs using your PC liance on short-term policies like tax credits. “There is concern about investing in a subsidy-driven industry,” said Neil Auerbach, a manager at Hudson Clean Energy Partners. Practical barriers must also be overcome. Perhaps the greatest concern for utilities contemplating adding solar and wind is reliability. To integrate intermittent renewables on a large-scale without compromising grid stability will require major investment in energy storage technologies, transmission capacity and grid intelligence. These infrastructure investments are stalled, as well, by the continuing uncertainty over future climate change legislation. Congress and the next president must enact comprehensive legislation that requires carbon dioxide emissions to be capped and, over time, reduced. Only when investors and utilities can be certain that they will be rewarded for reducing carbon emissions will we see the necessary mobilization of America’s immense imaginative and economic might. No one needs clarity about the new rules more than our nation’s utilities, which is why we believe public power producers should throw their considerable weight behind passing comprehensive national cap-and-trade legislation now. A number already have. Roy Thilly, president and CEO of Wisconsin Public Power, Inc., and co-chair of that state’s Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming, notes how hard it is to plan with the current fragmented and fickle regulatory regimes. “Without a nationwide system you run up against the seams between regions, competitive issues, leakage. And having Congress just renew the production tax credit year-by-year increases costs www.aemc.com “Only ‘utility nerds’ care about rates. Customers care about bills— how much they end up having to pay,” said Roy Thilly, president and CEO of Wisconsin Public Power, Inc. 28 OCTOBER 2008 PUBLIC POWER http://www.aemc.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - October 2008

Public Power - October 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions The Future of Fuels in a Carbon-Constrained World An Energy Revolution Energy Policy in 2009 and Beyond A Green Reincarnation Beyond the Green Bandwagon Reliability Green Energy Community Broadband Customer Service Hometown Connections Human Resources Parting Shot

Public Power - October 2008

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