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State Legislator's Comments

State Legislators Comments

Written by Paul Anderson - State House Representative 13A

Thursday, 16 July 2009 12:20

By State Rep. Paul Anderson

A group of legislators recently toured the Midwest ISO building in downtown St. Paul. It's a rather ordinary-looking structure in a commercially zoned part of the city. About the only aspects that appeared different were the multitude of antennas and satellite dishes on top of the building, along with a chain link fence around the outside.

After going through security, we were ushered into an area to view a large room that could have been used in a James Bond movie. Four operators were sitting at consoles, and one entire wall was taken up with a huge electronic map of the central U.S. Colors on the map were constantly changing, and various other numbers around the map continually blinked, as well.

MISO stands for Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, and with control centers in St. Paul and Carmel, Ind., it serves as the reliability coordinator for the transmission of high-voltage electricity in the Upper Midwest and a portion of central Canada. It also serves as a sort of clearinghouse for wholesale power transactions, with more than $40 billion a year traded through its market. That market consists of four tiers; of which three are the Day-Ahead Energy Market, the Real Time Energy Market, and the Financial Transmission Rights Market.

Those who have begun the process of building wind towers also deal with MISO, as it's the agency that determines how and when a wind project can hook up to the electric grid. It can be a long and bureaucratic process, although an attempt has been made to speed up the way the system works. Those projects that are fully funded and nearly shovel-ready are now given priority by MISO.

According to figures supplied to us, when natural gas sells for around eight cents a cubic foot, wind-power generation becomes price-competitive. Right now, gas is selling for less than four cents.

Currently, coal provides around 52 percent of electric generation nameplate capacity. Natural gas is next with 24 percent, followed by nuclear generation at about 8 percent. Wind power provides 4 percent of our electricity, hydro (dams) about 3 percent, and waste-to-energy less than 1 percent.

Wind power is supplying an ever-increasing amount of electricity for the Midwest. Its nameplate capacity has increased by 68 percent from just last year. The one aspect of wind generation that makes it more difficult to manage is its intermittent nature with no guarantee of capacity during periods of peak demand. Nearly 3,600 megawatts of new capacity are scheduled to come on-line this summer, with more than half of that total being supplied by wind.

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