Transmission poses obstacle to wind

From an article by Philip Brasher in the Des Moines Register:

Washington, D.C. - The political winds are right for making wind power in Iowa. The problem is getting that power to the big cities that can use it.

President-elect Barack Obama wants to use a massive economic stimulus program to create a green economy, and he's promised a "two-year nationwide effort to jumpstart job creation" by, among other things, building wind farms and solar power.

Environmentalists this week proposed that the package include a $30 billion, five-year extension of the federal tax subsidy for wind turbines, an idea Obama promoted during his campaign.

But industry officials - and Obama himself - say that building more wind farms won't be enough, that the nation needs a new superhighway of long-distance transmission lines. "If we're going to be serious about renewable energy," Obama told an MSNBC interviewer during the campaign, "I want to be able to get wind power from North Dakota to population centers, like Chicago."

Companies such as ITC Midwest, which moves electricity for Interstate Power and Light Co., and Ohio-based American Electric Power Co. are working on plans for high-voltage lines that would carry power from Iowa and the Dakotas to Chicago and beyond.

"The system today is just plain inadequate," said Doug Collins, executive director of ITC Midwest.

ITC Midwest has drafted rough plans for a set of lines that would run from South Dakota through Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa to Chicago. AEP has suggested a line that would snake around the Dakotas and extend across Iowa and Illinois to near Chicago.

But industry experts say it's difficult to build new lines for a variety of reasons: With some exceptions, the federal government generally can't decide where lines go or decide how the project costs will be shared among the customers and states that would benefit from the power. High-voltage lines can cost $3 million a mile to build.