PORTLAND, Oregon - the Manager of most of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest is running such a surplus of power from hydroelectric dams which he developed wind farms on notice Friday that they can be closed as soon as this weekend.
The Bonneville Power Administration has more enough electricity during cold, wet spring that created a big surge in the flow of the river where are located the hydroelectric dams. The Agency responded by announcing its intention to reduce the wind until the grid has more capacity, in a likely movement of cost of the industry of millions of dollars.
The decision reflects an issue neglected in the push to add wind farms across the country: the capacity of the electrical networks has not kept pace.
How soon and low long wind farms could be closed depends on the speed with which the region is warming and water shoots below the Pacific Ocean, said BPA administrator Steven Wright. The farms that would be closed are mainly in Washington and Oregon.
The main culprit for the slowdown of the wind is weather spring following a winter with heavy snowfalls in the mountains of food in the basin of the Columbia River. Spring is expected to be the largest since 1997.
When water levels are high, the Agency said, he has no choice but to use the water to produce electricity in hydroelectric dams. Endangered species protection laws prevent to send all the excess water through Weirs and dams. That beats the salmon and rainbow trout. It creates also so nitrogen gas bubbles in the water that fish get the equivalent of the bends.
Grid operators say that they have run out of capacity to sell the excess electricity, store water or close nuclear plants, oil and gas - leaving wind farms of the unfortunate victim.
The funding of many wind farms relies on tax credits that are useful only if electricity is produced. And the decision could set the stage for even more significant fighting in the coming years if the northwest wind industry double its capacity, according to projections, over the next decade.
Major wind interests, including utilities such as Portland General Electric, oppose the proposal of the BPA and suggest the prosecution are following. The utility, said the move could violate antitrust and laws of market manipulation.
Critics have also noted that the President Barack Obama and Steven Chu, Secretary of energy, who reappointed Wright than last year, were ardent supporters of alternative energy such as wind.
Salmon advocates also aligned with the wind industry of solidarity between the two groups with a long history of common interests of the environment.
"It is strange how a federal agency could do this kind of decision, said Nicole Cordan wild salmon Our record.". She and other critics, said that BPA had not explored enough options. BPA said that these options would cost its traditional customers, such as extra public power districts.
No estimates were immediately available of what the developers of headwind to lose. BPA projections earlier this year showed that restrict the wind energy over a period of three months, in the worst scenarios could cost them up to $ 50 million.
The action reflects the difficulty to integrate young wind industry in a power grid that dates back to the campaign for the construction of dam Northwest that began in the depression and kicked up a gear after the second world war.
Over the last decade, State and Federal Government encouraged wind farms by requiring that public service companies obtain large amounts of electricity from renewable energy sources and by granting tax credits. But the grid of electricity capacity has not been a similar expansion.
Wright said wind farms developed faster that he expected, given the severity of the recession, and regional interests have failed to find ways to work around the problem, bringing to achieve only a few months ago that such a decision was likely.
"We are talking about a surplus of energy without carbon emissions, low cost, and it seemed just me there would be a solution," he said.
It happens that the consequences of the judgment would be hard along the River, which cuts a gorge famous and forms something of an ideal wind tunnel for the hundreds of towers of permanent white turbine as pickets on the cliffs above. The capacity of the generators varies, but some are rated at up to 2 megawatts - BPA estimates 1 megawatt can power about 700 typical houses.
Between the Oregon and Washington States rank 4 and 5, respectively, of capacity of wind energy, according to the latest ranking of the American Wind Energy Association.
The Bonneville Power Administration manages approximately three quarters of the transmission of the Northwest and has long dealt with high water spring.
Power plants fuelled coal- and gas annex often down for maintenance in the spring time to enable producers of electricity in dams to produce more. This is the rationale for the current closure of nuclear power only commercial from the Northwest, the nuclear reservation of Hanford, of fuel refuelling and maintenance.
Last year, a spring storm sent a resurgence of wind energy in the grid of the Northwest and adjustments operators feverishly made.
Bonneville Power Administration is a self-financed Federal company which manages three-fourths of the electric transmission in the Northwest and sells power 31 dams and nuclear power, accounting for about one third of the supply in the Northwest. Its area includes portions of eight Western States.
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