6 in a series of 7
As the Kansas Department of Health and Environment considers the new air quality permit request for Sunflower Electric’s proposed 895mw coal-fired power plant, and before KDHE announces the schedule for public hearings, it seems like a good time to ask: Why are we still paying attention to the whole coal plant proposal?
We’re answering this basic question in a series of seven consecutive blogs/questions. Here’s the sixth.
Speaking of renewable energy, don’t we need the coal plant to get transmission lines so that we can export our wind energy?
No, absolutely not. The bulk of the transmission that would come as part of the coal plant project would be to move electricity from the plant to its primary owners in Colorado – not to improve or enhance the overall transmission grid in Kansas.
An operational coal plant cannot efficiently ramp up or ramp down production of electricity. Therefore, once a large coal plant is burning coal (already purchased on long-term contracts) to generate electricity, it will flood available transmission with that electricity. Transmission lines have a finite capacity – that is, they can only move a certain volume of electrons, like a two, four, or eight-lane highway each moves a certain number of vehicles. As a result, the coal plant will effectively crowd out other sources of electricity, like wind turbines.
Additionally, a regional plan to build high-capacity transmission tapping the vast wind energy reserves of western Kansas and the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles is already underway independent of the proposed coal plant.
Also worth noting: the best markets for Kansas wind energy – with the highest demand for renewably generated electricity, the least ability to meet those demands, and the lowest costs for delivering the electricity – are arguably to the east/southeast, not to the west where there are existing local wind energy reserves and a phase-shift barrier.
Certainly, construction of a power plant will create some transmission infrastructure in order to move electricity toward demand. But that does not need to be a coal plant – it could be a natural gas plant as well. And we are seeing development of transmission infrastructure independent of any new power plants.
So it is not accurate to say that Kansas must have this proposed coal plant in order to get transmission infrastructure for wind energy.
This is #6 of 7 questions – check back tomorrow for #7.
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