Article published Aug 12, 2007

Why not wind instead of coal?

By RICHARD ECKE

Tribune Staff Writer

Critics of the proposed Highwood Generating Station have been saying for months that wind power could eliminate the need for the coal-fired plant.

The theme runs through public meetings, letters to the editor, online forums and, most recently, a lawsuit filed to block federal funding for the $720 million project east of Great Falls.

So the question, posed recently to several people on both sides of the debate, is "why not wind?"

The short answer is that it would be possible to substitute wind power for electricity from the coal-fired plant if it were supplemented, or firmed, by electricity from other sources such as hydroelectric power or natural gas-fired power plants.

Standing in the way are technical issues and the rising costs of wind power.

In addition, the five rural co-ops comprising the Southern Montana Electric Generation & Transmission Cooperative need new power quickly to replace power they are losing from the Bonneville Power Administration.

Great Falls City Manager John Lawton, who has taken a lot of heat over the city's participation in the Highwood project, said he believes in wind power but that it is unlikely to be the total answer.

"It has to be available and it has to be the right price," Lawton said.

He added that the city of Great Falls will soon issue requests for proposals from wind-power companies and natural gas-fired plants to determine what other power sources may be available for the city's Electric City Power arm.

But Lawton said he sees such power as a supplement to the 250-megawatt Highwood Generating Station, not a replacement. He added the city plans to continue to pursue owning 15 percent of the coal-fired plant.

Rural Utilities Service criticized

Critics contend that the federal Rural Utilities Service, which is considering lending Highwood project developers more than $600 million, appeared to blow off wind as an alternative in a May 10 record of decision it issued jointly with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

The record of decision and final environmental impact statement states that wind energy would be "incapable of providing approximately 250 (megawatts) of base load due to its intermittency."

Other plant backers have rapped wind as either impractical or too expensive.

Critics, including the Montana Environmental Information Center and the Sierra Club, say Highwood developers should have thought about buying wind energy instead of burning coal.

They raised the issue in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., this summer. The third plaintiff was the Great Falls-based Citizens for Clean Energy.

Neil "Jerry" Taylor, a member of the citizens group, maintains city officials should have explored wind power "two years ago."

"I don't think they explored the possibilities," he said. "They haven't done their homework."

Taylor said his group has been pushing wind power for more than a year.

"Nobody listens," he said.

Wind-power advocate and Cascade County Commissioner Peggy Beltrone contended that the Rural Utilities Service and the Highwood plant developer have been so focused on coal that wind has been given short shrift. Beltrone said part of the reason the federal agency dismissed the idea of wind power is because it "has only dealt with co-ops using coal."

Wind power pioneer Ed DeMeo, president of Renewable Energy Consulting Services of Palo Alto, Calif., couldn't agree more.

DeMeo said recently that he hopes developers of the proposed Highwood Generating Station east of Great Falls "won't take what they see as the easy way out and build another coal plant. I think they should seriously consider wind."

Kenneth Reich, a Boston attorney for SME, counters that the impact statement on the plant "does a pretty good job of considering the wind option." He added that the analysis was thorough and detailed.

To create enough wind to equal the Highwood station's output would require 18.6 square miles of land, covering 11,880 acres, the impact statement said. Reich noted SME already has been criticized for its plan to place four wind turbines near the coal-fired plant.

Wind power getting pricier

Taylor and others have been weaving a tantalizing tale of late, describing how cheap wind-generated power is from Montana's biggest wind farm at Judith Gap.

That farm is a success story, thought it has created some technical challenges for NorthWestern Energy, which serves about 320,000 electric and gas customers in Montana.

"We're very pleased with Judith Gap," NorthWestern spokeswoman Claudia Rapkoch said.

One of the keys to the farm's success is "Montana has super-strong wind," said Mark Jacobson, senior development manager for Chicago-based Invenergy Wind, which owns the Judith Gap farm.

General Electric, which supplied wind machinery to Judith Gap, considers Montana's wind to be something special, he said.

"Judith Gap produced more electricity than any other wind farm in North America within their fleet," Jacobson said.

NorthWestern's decision to purchase wind power from the 135-megawatt Judith Gap farm was far-sighted. Wind power from Judith Gap now costs the company between $42 and $46 per megawatt hour, after figuring in the costs of supplemental power. That's a bargain-basement price with default electricity prices exceeding $55 per megawatt hour.

Jacobson said his company would be happy to talk to SME or Great Falls officials about selling wind power to them. He said the wind farm expects to expand by 53 or 54 megawatts as soon as 2008.

"It is a possibility," Jacobson said. "We're talking to a number of people right now. There are no signed contracts. We'd be happy to get together a proposal."

Jacobson declined to discuss the cost of new wind power from Judith Gap. But conservation groups claimed in their recent lawsuit that firmed wind power from central Montana could still be had for no more than $45 per megawatt hour.

Lawton called the claim "ridiculous," saying the price of wind power has risen since 2005, when NorthWestern Energy agreed to buy wind power from Judith Gap for 20 years at about $31 a megawatt hour. Supplemental electricity, known as firming power, pushes the total cost to $42 to $46 per megawatt hour, according to Rapkoch.

She said Montana consumers get that wind power from NorthWestern at cost, with no markup.

Unfortunately for groups such as SME that are hunting for energy, wind power costs are soaring.

Lawton said the city would be happy to snap up wind power at the old price.

"Will they sell it to us now for $42?" Lawton asked.

Coleen Balzarini, the city's fiscal officer, said she talked to Jacobson last month and was told the 53 or 54 megawatts of wind power would cost more than $50 per megawatt hour, not counting the firming power. With that added in, it could push the total cost higher than $60 per megawatt hour, which is more than NorthWestern's August residential default power cost of $56.87 per megawatt hour.

The Highwood project environmental impact statement estimated the cost of firmed wind power at $66.24 per megawatt hour.

That's substantially higher than the latest estimate of about $50 per megawatt hour for power from the proposed Highwood Generating Station. However, several unknowns exist that are likely to push up that cost.

Opponents of the coal-fired plant contend an expected federal carbon tax, which will tax companies based on carbon emissions, will increase Highwood's final power price. They also say the cost of power from the Highwood plant will increase if SME attempts to capture carbon dioxide and ship it via pipeline to oil fields in Canada or bury it underneath a salt dome east of Glacier National Park.

Last week, two Great Falls city commissioners said they think the wind versus coal issue is more complex than wind advocates portray it.

"This thing sounds so simple that you'd be doing it tomorrow," said City Commissioner Bill Beecher. "There's a catch someplace there."

Lawton said two major stumbling blocks for wind are cost and availability. He said it makes no sense for the city and SME to cancel plans for the Highwood station and "chase a ghost" — wind power.

He added the Judith Gap wind farm did not exist when rural co-ops began planning to make up for a loss of cheap Bonneville Power Administration electricity that is scheduled to start in 2008.

Base load vs. firmed wind

Officials sometimes dismiss wind as an unpredictable source of energy.

"If it's base load, then wind just simply can't do it," said Jason Hayes, communications director for the Washington, D.C.-based American Coal Council. That's a view echoed by Great Falls Mayor Dona Stebbins.

"The problem with wind power is that it doesn't supply base load," Stebbins said.

A base-load facility is one that provides a steady source of power.

Most energy experts agree that Hayes and Stebbins are right in saying wind alone cannot provide all the power needed by a community or rural electric co-op.

But the experts also say it's possible to substitute wind for coal, if it's supplemented by firming power from other sources.

"The firming power is the big thing," Hayes said.

Wind power from the Judith Gap area is being firmed relatively cheaply, and wind supporters argue that firming power ought to be available for more Montana wind farms, albeit at increasingly higher prices.

Greg Jergeson, chairman of the Montana Public Service Commission, agreed that electricity generated by wind can serve as base-load power if it's properly firmed.

"Firming is getting more expensive," Jergeson added.

Power to firm the 135-megawatt wind farm at Judith Gap comes primarily from contracts with two neighboring utilities, Idaho Power Co. in Boise, and Spokane-based Avista Utilities.

"They're both primarily hydro( power) utilities," Rapkoch noted. Water power can be well-suited to firming wind because water can be stored behind a dam, then released to create power when it's needed.

Another way to firm wind is through a natural gas-fired power plant. The down side to gas is it's expensive.

NorthWestern Energy arranges for its own firming power for Judith Gap. Great Falls officials say they'd be forced to go out and find their own firming power if the city purchased new wind power from Judith Gap or elsewhere.

Rapkoch confirmed that would be the case, adding it probably wouldn't be easy for Great Falls to buy firming power.

"It's not easy for us right now," Rapkoch said.

Contracts with Idaho Power and Avista are expiring soon, and NorthWestern is finding the market "very challenging," she said.

"The potential resources out there are drying up," Rapkoch added.

Montana in tough spot

Montana's position in the energy picture is a difficult one, according to DeMeo.

The electrical grid system is quite inflexible, with few connections to outlying areas, and few sources of power — primarily coal-fired power from Colstrip and hydro-electric power from dams in Cascade County and elsewhere.

Rapkoch agreed. She said that's why NorthWestern Energy hopes to build a new source of generation, probably a natural gas-fired power plant that could firm wind and cover short periods of peak electricity demand. The utility also has proposed a new transmission line from roughly Townsend to southwest Montana and into Idaho.

Another transmission line, called the Alberta Tie project, has been proposed from Great Falls into Alberta.

Wind will help diversify Montana's energy supply, but Rapkoch said there's a limit to how much wind NorthWestern could handle. That's why NorthWestern is taking part in a new study with wind experts and others that should pin down how much more wind power the system will accommodate. That study is due out by the end of the year.

Some common ground exists

Hayes conceded that coal has an image problem these days, although he pointed to a new plant near Edmonton, Alberta, Epcor's Genesis III plant, which is a "supercritical" facility that burns cleanly yet produces inexpensive power, he said. He argued that new technologies including gasification, supercritical plants, coal-to-liquids and other approaches will give coal a new lease on life.

Taylor argues that if Great Falls-area residents could choose between a coal-fired plant and buying power from a wind farm, he thinks they'd choose wind.

"It's a no-brainer," he said.

Wind power is not immune from criticism. The turbines kill birds and bats, and some people think huge wind farms don't do much for the landscape or view.

Texas-based Wind Hunter LLC originally planned to erect 337 towers in a 500 megawatt farm 30 miles northwest of Glasgow, but after objections from environmentalists about its proximity to a wilderness study area, the farm was scaled back to 114 of the 390-foot-tall machines.

Wind energy pioneer DeMeo said utilities tend to be conservative businesses, bound by tradition.

"Their job is to keep the power flowing," he said. DeMeo added that utilities need incentives to turn toward renewable energy. A carbon tax, which DeMeo believes is coming, will be one way to do that.

If the Highwood Generating Station becomes a test site for carbon dioxide capture and storing, it could be a good thing, DeMeo said. However, he said carbon capture and sequestration may come into play more often when retrofitting old plants rather than building new ones.

DeMeo said it's not unreasonable to expect the United States to get 20 percent of its power from wind in a few decades, but he conceded wind won't be a complete solution.

SME attorney Reich said much-need new power needs to come from somewhere, and price remains a big selling point for coal.

"In the next 10 years or so, there's going to be a severe energy shortage in all parts of the country, including the Northwest," Reich said.

The coal council's Hayes agreed and said he doesn't think that need for new power should be broken down into coal versus wind.

"We're in it together," Hayes said. "We need the electricity. Demand for electricity is going through the roof."