To me, wind power is the greatest thing since sliced bread (or at least since flat screen televisions)! My wife and I get 100% of our electricity from wind power through New Wind Energy, a product of Community Energy, Inc. I bought myself and my wife windmill t-shirts this Valentine's Day! I have a windmill decal on my car window. Yeah, you could say that I've got windmills on the brain.
Then came the disheartening news---the headline of a recent USA Today article read: "Wind energy confronts shortage of transmission lines." I immediately dove into the article to discover that the meteoric rise in wind farm construction is beginning to outstrip the capacity of high voltage lines to transfer the energy to cities; cites which are often times hundreds of miles away from the wind farms. This shortage of adequate power line capacity is sure to slow wind power's advancement and could inhibit some states' renewable energy mandates. You may say, "Let's string some new wires and get moving, folks!" Unfortunately, it's easier said than done. As stated in the aforementioned article: "Wind developers won't go ahead with projects until transmission lines are in place, and utilities are loath to build the lines until they're sure the developers won't back out." So often times, it becomes kind of a waiting game where the players may be more apt to fold than play their hands. And unfortunately, folks, while a wind farm can go up in as little as 18 months, a transmission line can take from 5 to 10 years to get going.
I'm not sure what the solutions are, but all I know is that with wind power presently supplying only 1% of our country's energy, if it is to become our future energy savior, then we'd better figure something out!
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