The Evolution And Integration of Renewable Energy

Jim Helvig, P.E., Vice President of Operations at Dashiell Corporation, Madison Operations, has been in the utility and renewable energy industry for over 24 years. He holds a BSEE from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology and has 25 years of practical military and utility industry leadership experience. Before that, Jim worked in the construction and land development industry. He has held every engineering, project management, and leadership position, from Graduate Engineer to President, and has applied his previous experiences to effectively develop a culture that keeps the end in mind.

The renewable industry has provided one of the most exciting, yet challenging, opportunities for our industry in the past few decades. In the early 2000s, the industry was primarily focused on incorporating wind turbines into our generation mix. The federal government incentivized the developers through non-renewing subsidies that spurred developers to move quickly to bring clean energy to the grid. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) was one of the premier advocates for anyone interested in the opportunities associated with the wind industry and attracted a mix of developers, high and medium-voltage contractors, equipment manufacturers, consulting engineers, utility engineers, landowners who were all looking for how they fit into the incredible transformation that was underway. Interest in the industry was far-reaching and a significant hurdle was developing the infrastructure to bring wind generation onto the grid and transfer it to load centers before incentives expired. We often referred to the industry back then as the “Wild West.”

As the market matured, contractors who had never participated in the construction of a substation were now hiring superintendents to help enter that market. Manufacturers were rushing to incorporate new technologies to meet the needs of the industry. The IEEE organization formed committees to determine best practices and establish standards to stabilize the technical design parameters, which flowed into construction. The excitement in the industry was the equivalent of a “moon shot” without the oversight of a NASA-type organization.

While developers and suppliers were working through requirements to put projects together, utilities were working on grid interconnection agreements and congestion. Utilities that had built the electrical infrastructure through careful and deliberate planning, using well-tested and highly reliable systems and processes, were now facing moving intermittent wind energy from source to load while maintaining high reliability in a very fast-paced renewable industry.

The renewable industry has now matured, regulation has been updated, energy corridors have been developed, and the technology has changed how renewable energy is incorporated into our local communities

  Moving wind energy from areas that had proficient wind resources and land to the load centers on the coasts was one of the early challenges. Plans for new or rebuilt transmission lines were developed to accommodate the shift in generation. In late 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama announced a national plan to develop a 765 kV grid to move energy from generation to load anywhere in the country; however, it was never realized. Utilities and developers worked with regulatory agencies to find new energy corridors in the face of the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) response. States that were not benefiting from the energy transfer did not support new corridors. In time, each state, along with the incumbent utility, developed its segment of the solution. In Minnesota, it was CAPX2020, and in Iowa, it was the MVP series of projects. Today we are still hearing about the Sun Zia and Gateway to the West projects, all of which are part of the continued need to move energy from the central U.S. to the coasts.

More recently, new renewables have trended from wind to solar generation. Technology supporting the renewable industry has exponentially advanced, combining renewable and storage technologies. The cost of renewable generation continues to drop, while coal-fired generation has increased as clean coal technologies are developed.

The renewable industry has now matured, regulations have been updated, energy corridors have been developed, and technology has changed how renewable energy is incorporated into our local communities.

Many neighborhoods now include distributed generation (rooftop solar, small wind turbines) and energy storage units like the Tesla Wall. Xcel Energy’s studies in Boulder, Colorado, have shown that integrated microgrids, built on a backbone of distributed generation and energy storage, are a viable alternative to expanding a distribution grid to increase reliability.

Our standard of living is tied to reliable electric energy and our industry has done an outstanding job of balancing the needs of the consumer with the demands of clean technology. The integration of technology into our grid has been foundational in maintaining high reliability while integrating intermittent renewable generation with baseload generation with very little negative impact on our daily lives.

With these advancements in technology, we are hardening our aging electrical infrastructure on the East Coast, incorporating more storage capacity into the grid with clean generation technology on the West Coast and solidifying interconnects to move the energy from where it is generated, to where it is needed while maintaining the high degree of reliability, we all expect.