Supergrid for Renewables: Coloring the US Grid Green (800 MW of PV for Maine?)

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/10/supergrid-for-renewables-colouring-the-us-grid-green

Renegades, some may call them, but people have lived off-grid for decades by relying exclusively on solar panels for electricity. Disconnected from their local utility, they have no central back-up and no reliability. Most solar electric users are less extreme. They remain connected to the utility and use a combination of solar and grid power.

GridSolar has taken the unusual step of proposing a solar photovoltaic project not as generation, but as transmission. The company has asked state regulators to approve 800 MW of solar capacity as an alternative to a US $1.5 billion high-voltage transmission line the local utility, Central Maine Power, wants to build. Describing itself as a smart grid alternative, GridSolar appears to be the first solar project in the US designed specifically to meet transmission needs.

But solar is not the only non-traditional approach to transmission springing up as the US grapples with how to expand and modernize its 340,000 km of high voltage lines into a national transmission superhighway. Like GridSolar, many of these innovations are offered under the umbrella of ‘smart grid’, a broad term often used to describe bringing digital technology, the grid and distributed technologies together. This effort has become so large that its market could rival in scope the development of the internet, according to technology giant Cisco.

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Furthermore, while GridSolar's concept is novel, it appears to hold public appeal. A poll commissioned by GridSolar of 500 Maine residents in April found nearly two to one approval for using solar panels for reliability rather than transmission lines.
Now, a Maine, US energy company has proposed a third and unique kind of relationship between solar energy system owners and the conventional electric grid. It is neither on-grid nor off-grid; instead solar energy becomes the grid.

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[kristopher]

1. An excellent example of the new energy economics that will be driving the future. nt