David Lester has a must-read piece in the Yakima Herald today about the balance between wind and hydro power to meet our region’s power needs.
The Bonneville Power Administration is under the gun to keep water flowing through the dams for salmon. The wild fluctuations in wind speeds make it tough to choose between water flow and power output from the wind farms.
The BPA is even considering curtailing wind production when stream flow goes so low that fish are threatened. They are working as quickly as possible to upgrade systems so that doesn’t happen because it would have a draconian impact on windfarm profits. This would put a huge damper on wind companies and their willingness to build new farms.
Given the economic opportunities provided by new wind farms, it’s going to be important for Central Washington that the BPA gets their systems working so we can keep putting new windfarms online.
simple
build more houses and business to consume the extra power being made. Or sell the extra to Califorina.
The problem is not a lack of buyers for power. The problem is that the transmission grid is unable to handle all of the load. Upgrading the power grid is a main priority.
On a related topic, I wonder why a concentrated solar thermal plant has not been proposed for any area of Eastern Washington unsuited to wind power. Why not on the Hanford Reservation which I expect is already tied into the power transmission grid?