In another example, the Department of the Interior worked with the State of California to create a Renewable Energy Policy Group to align Federal and state permitting and review processes to expedite solar, wind, geothermal and transmission projects in California.
TenneT, which operates the grid in Schleswig-Holstein, wants to extend the wind park idea to the transmission network, offering stakes in a line along the west coast.
An upgrade of the U.S. electricity transmission system to enable wind energy to flow from the middle of the country toward the coasts.
The barriers to adoption include availability of sites for wind installation, a lack of transmission lines and funding to build those lines and permitting delays.
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In some areas where the constraints are especially acute like Oregon and Washington State, the lack of spare transmission capacity could force wind farms that have already been built to shut down on a rolling basis in the near future.
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If there were insufficient transmission capacity to accommodate wind farms in Oregon that sold power to consumers in northern California, no developers would have proposed building those wind farms and no investors would have given them millions of dollars to do so.
Companies like Google are planning to invest billions in deepwater transmission networks to accomodate offshore wind farms off the East Coast.
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"And Hillary understands that to harness the power of the wind, we need to develop the transmission lines to bring that power from our plains to urban areas, " the ad read in part.
Regulators and utility executives at the national meeting in Washington also point to the billions of dollars needed for the transmission lines to deliver that wind power from the gusty plains to urban centers.
The underwater trunk transmission line carrying the power from the wind farms to shore has to be built.
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According to Gramlich, conventional generation sources like coal and natural gas are occupying the full capacity of the transmission grid, leaving no room for wind.
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Also, they are often located far from existing power lines--meaning that any company investing in wind power will probably need to invest in new transmission facilities as well.
The plan considered the environmental and economic impacts of a range of long-term transmission planning scenarios, including a 500 MW offshore wind farm.
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Wind and solar power also require huge amounts of land and expansive transmission lines to deliver electricity from remote sites.
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Like China, the prodigious expansion of power production from renewable-energy resources like wind, solar energy and geothermal has outpaced the ability of the transmission systems to move these new power supplies to centers of demand.
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It would require improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines and a five-fold increase in the pace of wind turbine installations.
The company would like to see a fraction of the credit go to utilities to compensate them for having to reserve space on their transmission systems and for having to run the back-up systems when the wind dies down.
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As a result, transmission constraints in the United States and the European Union are threatening to table large-scale wind and solar energy projects under development.
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The offshore transmission network would run from Virginia to New Jersey and be capable of delivering 2, 000 megawatts of wind energy, according to recent reports.
FORBES: Turn Baby, Turn - Offshore Wind Power Poised for Major Growth in U.S.
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