Compiled by WEN Staff

Where are the windest and sunniest areas of The West? That is what the Western Governors’ Association is working on to determine the best locations for major renewable energy projects.

Partnering with the Department of Energy, the group last week released a draft study identifying areas that contain the most potential for development of renewable energy sources, also including geothermal and hydropower.

The study says renewable energy projects could generate more than 235,000 megawatts of energy in the 12 western states, Mexico’s Baja California and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.

The “Western Renewable Energy Zone” project, say the officials from the Association, is intended to bring more renewable energy online by facilitating the construction of transmission lines between resource areas and population centers. The project is soliciting public comment on its early findings.

Without a major upgrading and expansion of transmission lines, the electrical grid will not be able to handle all the new renewable-generated power coming on line.

“The number one issue that renewable energy folks identified for us as being an impediment to greater development of renewable energy was transmission,” said Rich Halvey, the Governors’ Association energy program director. “We’re looking at big resource areas and large-sized transmission lines that are going to move the power over significant distances.”

According to the ongoing study, Wyoming has the most wind power potential - nearly 25,000 megawatts - and Arizona possesses the most solar power potential - more than 22,000 megawatts. As a way of comparison, an average coal-fired
power plant produces about 500 megawatts, Halvey said.

The study takes into account obstacles to energy development,
such as land-use restrictions and wildlife conflicts. It also
assumes restrictions on regulated state or federal lands, such
as U.S. Forest Service roadless areas, and other protected
wildlife habitat, like the Jackson pronghorn antelope migration
corridor in western Wyoming.

“The study’s resource-potential estimates are intentionally
conservative,” according to Halvey.

“Most of those areas are far larger than that in terms of
potential,” he said. “If it was a wind resource, we assumed
that only 25 percent of the resource in that area would get
developed, and if it was solar, we assumed it was only 3
percent of the resource in that area would get developed.”

Groups working on the study will continue to refine the
renewable energy zones and will present them at the Western
Governors’ Association annual meeting this summer in Utah.

What’s more, a committee of the Association dedicated to
generation and transmission modeling is developing tools to
help utilities estimate the costs of building new power lines
to renewable energy zones.

“That model is going to actually enable us to calculate the
delivered cost of electricity from anywhere to anywhere,”
Halvey said. “So if somebody in southern California says, ‘I
wonder how much it would be to bring wind in from Wyoming?’
they’d have a tool to be able to calculate that.”