The same federal utility that just had its board stacked with a retired coal executive (nominated by the Trump administration and approved by the GOP majority Senate) has now shut its door to an important alternative energy source – cheap wind power from the breezy plains of the Midwest.
“TVA killed what could have been one of the biggest and most important renewable energy projects in America,” Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Knoxville, told Times Free Press Business Editor Dave Flessner. “This was one of the best renewable energy deals in the Southeast and could have brought 3,500 megawatts of clean, renewable power to our region at an extremely low cost – cheaper than what TVA is now paying for its power.”
Six years ago, the Tennessee Valley Authority signed a memorandum of understanding with Clean Line Energy Partners LLC to consider a long-term power supply arrangement along a 700-mile wind energy transmission line the company proposed to build through Oklahoma and Arkansas. The high-voltage, direct-current transmission line, if built, would carry wind-generated electricity from western Oklahoma, southwest Kansas, and the Texas Panhandle to TVA, Arkansas and other eastern markets. The line, expected to be completed by 2020, would end in Memphis, and TVA could have have linked to it to use the wind-generated power for its own distribution across the seven-state TVA region.
But after running out the clock with years of study, TVA President Bill Johnson said the utility would back out of the plan – leaving the Clean Line project twisting in the wind.
Johnson said it didn’t make economic sense as TVA already has enough power-generating capacity and, with nuclear power, already is on path to generate more than half of its power from carbon-free sources. He said the “intermittent nature” of wind power would require TVA to build other backup power generators, including natural gas plants, that would offset the promised savings from the wind-generated power sources alone.