In the Dark
Wisconsin hasn't experienced persistent
interruptions of electric service since the century turned,
but we're still in a race against time to secure our energy
future. As to the outcome, unpredictable things like accidents
and attitudes are keeping us in the dark.
More dependent than ever on electricity,
we're also more resistant than ever to building what's needed
to ensure we have enough of it. And today, even "enough"
is a tougher standard to meet because of the unvarying, high-quality
power modern technology and industrial processes require.
Fall short on that requirement, and all our computers and high-tech
manufacturing controls might as well be props on a Star Trek
set—with the added drawback that there’d be no guarantee
we could keep the colored lights blinking.
And make no mistake, Wisconsin
is in a race to keep electricity supply ahead of demand. It’s
a race with no finish line and we're ahead for the moment, but
if our resistance to building utility infrastructure gets any
stronger, Wisconsin and its economy could soon fall into a trailing
position and take a long time catching up.
Herewith, a review of recent and
ongoing developments that could help determine whether Wisconsin
will have the real ammunition it needs for future economic growth
or whether we'll just be firing photon torpedoes:
Presque Isle Outage—Score
this as something to keep an eye on. At press time for this
month's Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News, Milwaukee-based We
Energies was working to put its Presque Isle power plant near
Marquette, Michigan, back in service. The nine-unit coal-fired
plant was knocked out by flooding May 15 when a dike failed
at the Upper Peninsula Power Company's Silver Lake Dam. With
four feet of water in the first floor level, much of the plant's
equipment was completely submerged. It was hoped some units
could be running in June, but Presque Isle's full 617 megawatts
weren't expected on line before mid-July.
Why does this matter to Wisconsin?
Ironically, efforts since the late 1990s to build up our notoriously
weak transmission links with neighboring states have included
strengthening connections to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
A municipal utility official recently told us it’s a generally
positive thing that we’re more closely tied with the U.P.,
but he said it also means some added potential for their problems
to become our problems. Early this year, he noted, Wisconsin
regulators said we could maintain system reliability in the
face of two simultaneous "events" disabling major
generating units. “Now,” he observed dryly, “we
may have one."
Columbia Outages—You’d
get an argument on this number, but there are those who claim
eight unplanned outages have occurred at the big two-unit Columbia
power plant near Portage since the beginning of 2003. Jointly
owned by Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Public Service Corporation,
and Madison Gas and Electric, the coal-fired plant produces
more than 1,000 megawatts of power when everything is working.
Charging that oftentimes everything isn't working, the Wisconsin
Industrial Energy Group and the Citizens Utility Board (CUB)
this spring asked the Public Service Commission (PSC) to investigate
maintenance practices at Columbia, operated by Alliant's Wisconsin
Power and Light affiliate.
Just before press time, we verified
recent problems with steam-tube leaks at Columbia’s Unit
Two and were told the PSC was conducting an “informal
review” of information provided by Power and Light. Completion
of the review was expected early this summer.
“We’re watching the frequency of the outage situations,
trying to see whether it’s unusual [at Columbia] as compared
with the rest of Wisconsin, across the country, or industrywide,”
said Scott Cullen, chief engineer with the PSC’s electric
division.
“We’re going to see
if it’s necessary to make suggestions or recommendations
to the company to bring that unit up to a higher level of performance,”
Cullen said, adding that it would be up to the three commissioners
to decide whether and what action might be required once the
staff presents its findings.
Atoms in the Attic—In
February, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News reported on the
potential premature loss of 1,700 megawatts of nuclear generating
capacity from two plants in Minnesota. The issue then was a
choice between additional on-site storage for spent fuel and
closing both facilities in 2007—possibly before non-nuclear
replacements of comparable capacity could be built.
In May, Minnesota lawmakers acted
to allow more storage. But betting on renewal of the licenses
to operate those plants when the current ones expire in 2013
and '14 could be a mistake. Governor Tim Pawlenty backed the
expanded storage legislation, but he was also quoted in the
St. Paul Pioneer Press saying of the two plants, "They're
getting old, and you can't keep them open forever." Owner
Xcel Energy had been negotiating with two independent power
plant developers and said it wanted a pair of new facilities
built regardless of the fate of the bill keeping the Prairie
Island and Monticello nuclear units open. But more recently
Xcel said it was dropping plans for the two new plants, coal-
and gas-fired, in the Twin Cities area.
Here again, events in a neighboring
state have a definite bearing on Wisconsin’s energy security.
The Prairie Island and Monticello plants produce about one-fifth
of all the electricity generated for customers of Xcel’s
Northern States Power affiliate, which means most of the people
in western Wisconsin north of the Wisconsin River who aren’t
served by electric cooperatives. Being forced to replace those
plants four years from now would have been an extraordinary
challenge. The ordinary challenge is to have adequate new generating
capacity available when they are overtaken by demand growth
and perhaps license expiration. By the time the latter occurs,
just replacing them megawatt-for-megawatt probably won’t
be enough.
Minnesota Association of Cooperatives lobbyist Bruce Kleven
tells us the new law transfers authority for future nuclear
regulatory decisions from the Legislature to the Public Utilities
Commission “in an effort,” he says, “to remove
some of the emotion and politics that are in play at the Legislature
and take a more science-based approach to the issue in the years
beyond 2014.”
Nowadays, the need for such an
approach seems increasingly urgent, no matter what fuel is being
used.
Is Power the Future
in Our Future?—Wisconsin’s electric cooperatives
didn’t hesitate to criticize We Energies (then Wisconsin
Electric Power Company) when it was beset with reliability problems
in the 1990s. Neither did the co-ops hesitate to endorse the
utility's bid to add 1,800 megawatts of new generation in southeast
Wisconsin. The plan, called “Power the Future,”
would combine clearly needed capacity additions with dramatically
reduced emissions, thanks to improved coal-combustion technology.
With past We Energies critics (notably the Customers First!
Coalition, whose founders include the cooperatives) affirming
Power the Future’s net benefits, the plan seemed on track.
But things haven’t gone
as well lately. In May, a draft environmental impact statement
prepared jointly by the PSC and Department of Natural Resources
said the plan as presented was not the “least-cost alternative”
for meeting energy needs—a crucial criterion for regulatory
approval.
Later in May, the Citizens Utility Board—officially a
project supporter as a member of Customers First!—backed
out, calling Power the Future too expensive. Days earlier, CUB
Executive Director Steve Hiniker had said he was “exploring
the possibility of a class action lawsuit on behalf of the people
who have become ill or died because of pollution” from
the company’s plants. CUB thus openly joined forces with
environmental and religious groups and some local governments
hoping to block the project with a heavily financed political
effort conspicuously led by Racine industrialist S.C. Johnson.
The PSC is to decide the project’s
fate later this year.
Easy to Say, Hard to Do
These days, if you can’t
find a conveniently scheduled seminar where people from radically
different backgrounds all agree that we need to build energy
infrastructure, you just aren’t trying.
The transition from rhetoric to
reality is where things unravel.
In May, a forum conducted by a Madison public affairs firm rolled
out polling numbers all topping 60-percent support for local
construction of new transmission lines, power plants, and natural-gas
pipelines—figures no one would have guessed, based on
the typical media coverage of siting issues.
In fact, the data showed enthusiasm
for strengthening utility infrastructure didn't wane significantly
until poll respondents were asked about a hypothetical project
within one mile of their homes. A major purpose of the forum
was to examine why Wisconsin's need for a stronger electric
infrastructure wasn't presented more effectively by the media,
and all the media panelists—a daily newspaper publisher,
a managing editor, and a television station manager—all
dutifully agreed they needed to do a better job.
A month later, observing that
no Wisconsin energy company has built a base-load power plant
in 20 years, Governor Doyle told another forum, “We do
not have the luxury of just saying no to new transmission and
new power plants.”
At the same event, CUB’s
Steve Hiniker, currently litigating against a transmission project
and campaigning against Power the Future, was quoted by a Milwaukee-based
construction trades paper, The Daily Reporter, saying, “We’re
looking at a time when we’re going to be building a lot
of new power plants and transmission lines.”
There was no word on when that
time might be.
On Borrowed Time
Jensen: Economy Hides Generation Needs
“Most people don’t
realize how close we are” to electricity demand overwhelming
Wisconsin’s generating capacity, the chairman of the Assembly
Committee on Energy and Utilities told the state’s electric
co-op managers in January.
At a meeting reported here earlier,
State Rep. Scott Jensen (R–Waukesha) expressed his view
that the slow economy has hidden the deficiencies of Wisconsin’s
electric infrastructure and that a return to robust economic
growth will quickly expose them.
It’s a hard view to contradict,
given that Wisconsin remains a net importer of electricity,
buying between 15 and 20 percent of its daily power needs in
other states. The figure is essentially unchanged from the 1990s,
despite the addition of several new generating units.
Long an advocate of increasing
state aid to municipalities hosting utility infrastructure,
Jensen recently presided over hearings on legislation to do
just that—in his words, “to make sure communities
welcome generating facilities instead of obstructing them.”
Garvin: You Need it When?
Two factors that seem to lack
relevance in determining how long it takes to win regulatory
approval for electric infrastructure projects are urgency and
net environmental improvement. There’s no better illustration
than the Chisago–Apple River transmission line.
A joint project of Dairyland Power
Cooperative and Xcel Energy under regulatory review since 1995,
the line could help ease severely congested transmission east
of the Twin Cities, strengthen distribution in nearby Wisconsin
counties, and reduce the number of transmission lines spanning
the St. Croix River. The Wisconsin PSC gave it the green light
four years ago in May.
But as reported in this magazine earlier, preparing for a Madison
conference this spring,
Commissioner Robert Garvin asked
PSC staff how soon final approvals could be expected and was
told "their best-case scenario for completion of regulatory
review by Minnesota and federal agencies was May 2005."
The project must ultimately be
blessed by 14 separate agencies, Garvin said.
