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Public Power Officials: Horse Heaven Won't Make Grid More Reliable by Don Jenkins Capital Press, June 5, 2024

Public power officials dispute Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's claim that the Horse Heaven wind and solar project would make the electric grid more reliable, calling it "utter nonsense" and "fanciful."

Northwest Public Power Association executive director Kurt Miller said simply increasing intermittent wind and solar power won't meet the region's pressing need for energy that can be ramped up on demand.

"I think that's at the heart of the issue," Miller said Monday. "In the future, we may have a huge abundance of electricity for most hours, but a big deficit during really cold and hot spells."

Scout Clean Energy of Boulder, Colo., proposes to put more than 200 wind turbines and more than 5,000 acres of solar panels on rolling hills near the Tri-Cities in Benton County in southeast Washington.

Inslee rejected concerns about the project's impact on views, wildlife and Yakama Nation culture and ordered the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council to loosen its recommended constraints on the number of turbines.

Washington will need the electricity from about 20 renewable energy projects the magnitude of Horse Heaven by 2035, according to Inlsee.

"Washington state faces the stark reality that without a rapid buildout of new clean energy generation and transmission, the dependability of our electricity and grid is at risk," the governor wrote to EFSEC.

"We must come to grips with the fact that we will need to adapt and accept relatively moderate changes to our physical landscape in order to ensure continued, reliable electricity service," his letter reads.

Benton Public Utility District General Manager Rick Dunn said the claim the Horse Heaven project would contribute to grid reliability was "utter nonsense."

"We should be screaming across the mountaintops across the state, 'It's not true,'" he said.

The Nine Canyon wind project next to the proposed Horse Heaven project stopped generating electricity during a cold and windless five-day snap in January, according to Dunn.

To meet demand that week, Washington imported huge amounts of thermal electricity from the Southwest and Rocky Mountains, according to the Western Power Pool, an association of utilities.

Twenty more wind farms in Washington would not have helped because the wind wasn't blowing, Dunn said.

Washington Department of Commerce energy policy manager Glenn Blackmon said wind and solar plants could make the grid more reliable if enough are built in different regions.

"A diverse portfolio of variable resources ... contribute to grid reliability even when each of the generating units is certain to be offline at times," he said in an email.

Scout's plan also includes batteries that could provide power on-demand for four hours.

Washington Public Utility Districts Association policy director Nicolas Garcia said he was skeptical spread out wind and solar projects would stabilize the grid. Weather patterns are large and more transmission lines would need to be built, he said.

Batteries would have to last for days, not hours, to make a meaningful contribution to grid reliability, he said.

"Batteries will infinitesimally improve grid reliability," Garcia said. "I think to argue (Horse Heaven) would improve reliability is fanciful."

Related Pages:
Report: Horse Heaven Energy Project Impact on Farming 'Low' by Don Jenkins, Capital Press, 12/20/22