POWER April 2013 - 80

COMMENTARY
The Pacific Northwest's Wind
Fleet Integration Struggles
By Eric Christensen
M
ae West said, " Too much of a good thing can be taxing. "
The Pacific Northwest has a good thing-plentiful,
carbon-free power from its huge wind and hydroelectric
fleets. But wind's huge variability can be taxing. The Northwest's
scramble to integrate growing wind generation, and the resulting
litigation melee, underscore the importance of quickly solving
the variable resource integration puzzle.
Over the past decade, wind generation in the Northwest has
exploded. Wind capacity has grown from almost nothing to nearly
5,000 MW in the region's largest balancing area, the Bonneville
Power Administration. Already, hourly ramps from wind generation
regularly exceed 2,000 MW. These rapid ramps will continue
to grow with the size of the wind fleet, which Bonneville expects
to reach 6,000 MW to 7,500 MW by 2017. With its huge carbonfree
capacity and flexibility to rapidly adjust output, the Northwest's
hydro system is ideally suited to balance these ramps. But
the hydro system is now often taxed to the breaking point to
reliably integrate large volumes of wind generation.
The immediate problem stems from Clean Water Act limits on
dissolved gases. These limits are designed to protect aquatic
creatures, including endangered Columbia River salmon, from
" gas bubble trauma " -the equivalent of " the bends " in human
divers. To avoid violating dissolved gas limits, Bonneville runs
water through hydroelectric turbines (which does not increase
dissolved gases) rather than spilling water over dams (which
does). But the resulting hydro generation, when it coincides with
high wind generation, has periodically exceeded regional demand.
Twisting the knife, the Washington State Court of Appeals
recently rejected an attempt to increase dissolved gas limits on
the Columbia River, denying Bonneville an added measure of flexibility
to avoid curtailments.
Destructive Litigation
Bonneville has twice proposed solutions to this problem,
relying on curtailments to wind generation. Wind producers
complain that Bonneville's curtailment policies impose unique
burdens on them, causing, for example, lost production tax
credits and renewable energy credits, in addition to lost power
production. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's
(FERC's) decisions raise fundamental legal questions concerning
the extent to which Bonneville policy will be dictated by
FERC, as opposed to the regional interests that have traditionally
held sway at Bonneville, and litigation can therefore be
expected to continue for years.
However, the litigation involves trivial amounts of power. Only
about 150,000 MWh of wind production have been curtailed over
the past two years in a region that consumes roughly 170 million
MWh annually. Worse, the litigation has driven a wedge between
wind producers and many of their natural allies. The wind boom
has breathed new life into struggling rural economies across the
80
region. But those same rural areas are mostly served by publicly
owned utilities that rely on power from the federal hydro system,
and many in the rural Northwest view the wind generators' litigation
as an attack on this vital resource.
The Real Problem Is Elsewhere
Most importantly, the litigation ignores the Golden Bear in the
room-California's protectionist policies that have effectively
walled off its robust renewable energy market from the rest of the
West. California's policies are vulnerable legally because, for example,
they violate the U.S. Constitution's " dormant " Commerce
Clause. Yet, while Northwest renewable energy interests squabble
over trivial amounts of power, California's destructive policies
have gone unchallenged. And the curtailment issue is merely a
Even the Pacific Northwest's
vast hydroelectric system lacks
the capacity to integrate evergreater
amounts of variable
wind generation.
symptom of the ultimate problem-even the Pacific Northwest's
vast hydroelectric system lacks the capacity to integrate evergreater
amounts of variable wind generation.
To solve the wind integration problem, the Northwest needs to
attack counterproductive policies like California's. It also needs
to grow the regional capacity pie. The region is already exploring
improved coordination between balancing authorities and other
short-term measures that will marginally improve its ability to
integrate variable resources. Additional physical storage capacity
is also critical. Hence, the region needs to explore major investments
in proven technologies like pumped storage, as well as
cutting-edge storage technologies like advanced batteries. Electrification
of the regional transportation system coupled with
" smart grid " technology may allow electric car batteries to become
a major storage resource. The region also needs to improve
transmission links to the major storage reservoirs in British Columbia
and expand the footprint of its wind fleet so that the
fleet's output is more diverse and therefore easier to integrate.
Finally, the region needs to encourage greater use of nonvariable
renewables like geothermal.
Following this path, the region can continue developing its diverse
renewable energy resources. If it does so, it may find, as Mae
West also said, " Too much of a good thing can be wonderful! " ■
-Eric Christensen is chairman of the Energy, Telecommunications
& Utilities Practice Group at Gordon Thomas Honeywell
LLP in Seattle.
www.powermag.com
POWER | April 2013
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POWER April 2013

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