An $8 billion wind power project to supply the Los Angeles area with large amounts of electricity from a wind farm in Wyoming via an energy storage facility in Utah was proposed Tuesday by four companies.
The Wyoming and Utah sites would be linked by a $2.6 billion, 525-mile transmission line that would traverse Colorado, and the power would be sent on to California through an existing, 490-mile transmission line, the group said in a statement.
Four companies today jointly proposed a first-in-the-U.S., $8-billion green energy initiative that would bring large amounts of clean electricity to the Los Angeles area by 2023.
The project would require construction of one of America’s largest wind farms in Wyoming, one of the world’s biggest energy storage facilities in Utah, and a 525-mile electric transmission line connecting the two sites.
“This project would be the 21st century’s Hoover Dam – a landmark of the clean energy revolution,” said Jeff Meyer, managing partner of Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, one of the four companies involved in the initiative.
The proposed project would generate more than twice the amount of electricity produced by the giant 1930s-era hydroelectric dam in Nevada – 9.2 million megawatt-hours per year vs. 3.9 million megawatt-hours.
A key component of the project – a massive underground energy storage facility – would yield 1,200 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant and enough to serve an estimated 1.2 million L.A.-area homes.
The four companies – Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, Magnum Energy, Dresser-Rand and Duke-American Transmission – will formally submit their proposal to the Southern California Public Power Authority by early 2015 in response to the agency’s request for proposals to supply the Los Angeles area with renewable energy and electricity storage.
The underground energy storage facility would help solve one of renewable energy’s biggest challenges – its intermittency. Wind farms produce no electricity when there’s no wind; solar farms produce no electricity when there’s no sun.
Linking the wind farm to the energy storage facility would enable the wind farm to function largely like a traditional coal, nuclear or natural gas power plant – capable of reliably delivering large amounts of electricity whenever needed, based on customer demand.
The energy storage facility also would reduce the need for L.A.-area utilities to build expensive backup power plants and power lines to serve customers on days when there’s no wind, at night when there’s no sunlight, and during other periods when traditional wind and solar farms are unable to produce electricity.
Key components of proposed project
- Wind farm – Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy would build, own and operate the $4-billion wind farm – near Chugwater, Wyo., 40 miles north of Cheyenne – which would generate 2,100 megawatts of electricity.
- Energy storage facility – Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, Magnum Energy and Dresser-Rand would install the $1.5-billion “compressed air energy storage” system at a site near Delta, Utah, 130 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Four vertical caverns – carved out of an underground salt formation at the site – would be key components of the storage system.
Each cavern would be about a quarter-mile in height, 290 feet in diameter and 41 million cubic feet in volume. The four caverns combined would store the energy equivalent of 60,000 megawatt-hours of electricity.
During periods of low customer demand, the storage facility would use excess electricity from the Pathfinder wind farm to compress and inject high-pressure air into the caverns for storage.
During periods of high customer demand, the facility would use the stored, high-pressure compressed air, combined with a small amount of natural gas, to power eight generators that would produce electricity.
- Electric transmission line – Duke-American Transmission proposes to build the $2.6-billion, 525-mile, high-voltage electric transmission line that would transport the Wyoming wind farm’s electricity to the Utah energy storage facility.
The transmission line – a shorter alternative to Duke-American Transmission’s previously proposed 850-mile Zephyr transmission project – would traverse Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, with a target in-service date of 2023.
A separate, existing 490-mile transmission line – traversing Utah, Nevada and California – would transport electricity from the Utah energy storage facility to the Los Angeles area.
Video about project (5 minutes) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i1OXVto6_w
Media teleconference today – 1 p.m. Eastern Time (10 a.m. Pacific)
- United States and Canada: 888-206-4836
International: 1-913-312-1504
Conference ID: “LA green energy”
Speakers:
- Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy – Jeff Meyer, managing partner.
- Dresser-Rand – Jim Heid, senior vice president.
- Duke-American Transmission – Chris Jones, managing director of business development.
- Moderator – Dave Scanzoni
Company profiles
- Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy – Developer of the proposed Pathfinder wind farm, with financial backing from lead partner Sammons Power Development, and wind turbine technology from GE Power & Water. Pathfinder also operates the environmentally focused, 700,000-acre Sweetwater River Conservancy at the company’s Wyoming ranch. Pathfinder is based in Alcova, Wyo. (Media contact: John Reed, 214-763-8379.)
- Magnum Energy – Developer of the underground energy storage facility. Owned by Magnum Development, a Haddington Ventures portfolio company. Participating investors in Haddington Ventures include insurance companies, public and private pension groups, commercial banks and high net-worth individuals. Magnum Energy is based in Salt Lake City. (Media contact: Rob Webster, 801-990-2970.)
- Dresser-Rand – One of the world’s largest suppliers of custom-engineered rotating equipment solutions for long-life, critical applications in the oil, gas, chemical, petrochemical, process and power generation industries, and the military. Its applications use renewable energy sources; reduce carbon footprints; recover energy; and increase energy efficiency. Dresser-Rand is based in Houston. (Media contact: Jim Heid, 713-935-3410.)
- Duke-American Transmission Co. – A transmission developer equally owned by Duke Energy, the largest electric power holding company in the U.S., and American Transmission Co., the nation’s first multi-state transmission-only utility. Duke Energy’s regulated utilities serve customers in six states in the Southeast and Midwest. Its commercial and international units own and operate assets – including numerous renewable energy projects – across the U.S., Central America and South America. Duke Energy is based in Charlotte, N.C. Headquartered in Pewaukee, Wis., ATC owns and operates nearly 9,500 miles of transmission lines and 530 substations in the Midwest. (Media contact: Dave Scanzoni, 800-559-3853 or Anne Spaltholz, 855-770-3282.) www.datcllc.com
