Letter from Lew
Our friend Lew sent this along, tipping us off to the WV PSC’s first round of questions for Allegheny Power over the power line it’s trying to ram down our throats.
I emphasized a few things in bold that you might want to pay attention to.
Thanks again to Lew. Here is his entire note:
The PSC’s first set of interrogatories were published Friday. They are at:
http://www.psc.state.wv.us/imaged_files/Docket/2007_06/dck20070622161326.pdf
It appears to me the PSC staff has asked questions that we (Laurel Run Community Watershed Association) would have asked and then some. The response, due in 20 days, will likely be voluminous. Some of the questions posed indicate AE’s filing logic left something to be desired.
Over this way, we view the order compelling AE to study the alternate route proposed by Billy Jack Gregg as a positive note for moving the line out of the watershed. Paralleling the current Ft. Martin - Pruntytown - Mt. Storm should reduce the amount of green space that would have otherwise have been disturbed.
Although there is a groundswell of protest against the corridor concept, one that I suspect will grow as other counties become aware they are in the route plan, I doubt the Feds are going to change their minds. None the less, we will keep trying. It is alarming that PJM, in discussing the John Amos and NJ lines, notes that branches off Trail may be considered. No other specifics on that were given in the announcement.
You may be interested in a letter to the editor I sent to the Morgantown Dominion Post last week.
Allegheny Energy in defending the TrAIL project says the line is necessary to prevent blackouts and brownouts. Growth, they say, has outstripped capacity. What they don’t say is that many of the woes of today’s power grid are due to the failure of electricity providers to update their technology.
Switches remain mechanical. Systems connected to the grid cannot talk to each other, let alone react to problems in another system miles away, and there is no way to efficiently manage the overall grid. Estimates are that over half of outages in recent years could have been prevented or resolved more quickly were modern technology in use.
Industry efforts to modernize have been questionable. The Electric Power Research Institute reports the utility industry spends 0.2% of total revenues on research and development – less than the dog food industry. Really. The Department of Energy, which is on the verge of establishing “energy corridors” where power lines could be strung virtually anywhere on land people do not want to give up, has allocated one half of one percent of its budget to grid research.
Building power lines is how power delivery was addressed in the 20th century. The 21st century offers tools that can reduce blackouts and brownouts. PJM, the grid manager, has indicated it will push for a “smart grid”, that much like the Internet can react to congestion and take appropriate steps rapidly. Much work will have to be done, at rate payers’ expense, work that should have been done before the horse left the barn. Growth will surely continue in areas where it is under way now and other areas, like Morgantown, are developing rapidly. Add in the possibility that electric vehicles that are plugged in over night to recharge and similar notions are on the horizon and it seems inevitable that more power will be needed.
Are more power lines needed? Maybe at some point. But might it not be better to first develop a “smart grid” that can react more readily before disrupting thousands of lives and miles of land for rights of way?
TrAIL and the imminent line from John Amos to New Jersey will require over 7000 acres of West Virginian’s property, roughly the area of Morgantown. Viewed another way, an acre of trees scrubs from the air the CO2 a car generates in traveling 26,000 miles. Were all those 7000 acres forested, clearing them for the two power lines would remove the power to absorb the CO2 created by vehicles traveling 182,000,000 miles. About the national annual number of miles traveled by 15,200 vehicles. All for power lines that currently use outmoded, inadequate technology.
Simply stringing more power lines without installing modern technology first means more miles of lines that cannot be managed any better than the existing lines. Rather than solving the problems we supposedly have now, the potential for more problems will increase. Adopting new technology first would allow more continuous service with existing lines and reduce the need to spoil states with massive towers.