NEW ENERGY NEEDS WIRES

AWEA Statement On NERC, FERC Focus on Integrating Renewables
Julie Clendenin and Christine Real de Azua, March 2, 2009 (American Wind Energy Association)

"American Wind Energy Association Policy Director Rob Gramlich today released the following statement:

"'The U.S. wind energy industry applauds the significant new focus by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) on the need to modernize America’s electricity transmission system to adapt to renewable resource development. FERC is holding an all-day conference today on integrating renewable energy into the grid. (FERC regulates NERC and most U.S. transmission owners to ensure non-discriminatory access for all transmission customers including renewable resources.)

"'NERC’s CEO Rick Sergel spoke at the conference and issued a press release strongly advocating that the electric industry take action to make needed reforms. NERC is the international reliability standards setting and enforcement body. Sergel announced that later this month NERC will release a detailed report on integrating renewable (and other ’variable ’) resources into the electric grid. AWEA applauds this report and the effort by NERC to focus on the changes that will be required to meet the electricity demands of the 21st Century economy.'"

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"'Proposed wind projects totaling more than 200,000 megawatts in capacity—enough to power the equivalent of more than one-third of all the homes in America—have applied for connection to the U.S. electric transmission system. We urgently need to build the green transmission superhighway that will allow those projects to deliver the clean electricity they generate to America’s cities.

"'We also very much appreciate Chairman Sergel’s positive remarks about the use of demand response and plug-in hybrid vehicles as major elements of a future electric utility system that can accommodate large amounts of electricity from variable generation sources like wind and solar power.'"