A story in today’s Washington Post describes the quandary a local Minnesota electrical cooperative is facing as it contemplates producing its own energy using wind turbines.
Community power systems are another step in user-produced power and an evolution of distributed generation where electrical production is de-centralized and moved closer to the point of consumption.
In Minnesota, Wilmar Municipal Utilities has lowered costs and decreased its environmental impact by adding power-producing wind turbines to its system. Their original plan called for using existing transmission lines to distribute the power locally and transfer any surplus back to utilities or to other communities.
The problem comes when the additional energy exceeds the capacity of the existing lines. The question then becomes, who is responsible for making the investment to upgrade those lines?
Utility companies have traditionally shouldered these costs, but with community power systems springing up nationwide, the necessary investment in T&D line upgrades has moved from billions to trillions of dollars.
Community power systems are doing a marvelous job of bringing green energy closer to home, but this article illustrates that without the necessary infrastructure, the full potential of energy independence in the U.S. can’t be realized. And right now, we don’t have a clear way to move this investment forward — either through government funding or an environment that would make it easy for private companies to do so.
See the Edison Energy Institute’s analysis of utility investment included in the stimulus package.