This week, a New Mexico-based company by the name of Tres Amigas took center stage in the arena of grid planning with an ambitious proposal: a three-way link that would allow substantial power to move among the three major U.S. systems as a single cohesive grid.
The United States is currently spanned by three separate power systems linked by a small number of disassociated grids. For four decades, the Western, Eastern, and Texas (also referred to as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) Interconnects have run more or less independently, providing much of North America with power. 
The Tres Amigas project would connect the Western Interconnection (which runs from British Columbia to Baja California and extends east to the Rockies), the Eastern Interconnection (which stretches from Halifax to North and South Dakota and Louisiana), and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (which covers most of the state).
The project would more than double the amount of power-moving capacity that the current system is capable of — with room for expansion. Currently, eight small connections link the three grids, with an equivalent power output of a couple of nuclear power plants. This power output could be increased to as much as 30,000 megawatts in the future.
Tres Amigas — whose name translates from Spanish to three friends (rather appropriately, I think) — has outlined a proposal that would involve building a massive (more than 20 square miles) power hub near Clovis, NM, away from residential populations, but at the epicenter of American wind and solar technology and resources.
Texas, for example, generates more power from its wind turbines than it can deliver to market. Linking the separate grids would enable this power to be moved and distributed on the coasts. The same holds true for other renewable sources, like solar power: those states in the Southwest United States yield more solar power from their deserts than coastal states, but that power must be delivered to market in order to be useful.
"By tying the nation's three power grids together, the Tres Amigas station will catalyze the adoption of renewable power while at the same time increasing the reliability of our electricity network, which is fundamental to the expansion of the U.S. economy," says Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM).
Founder and CEO of Tres Amigas Phil Harris is also holding the pencil that designed the three-way connection. Harris is the former president of an organization that oversees the power grid for Mid-Atlantic States. In recent news, Harris has been encouraging local landowners and energy developers to deliver supportive statements to regulators regarding the Tres Amigas project.
The project is still in its early stages and funding is still being secured. Other companies will have to spend substantial amounts in building transmission lines, and Harris has told news sources he has already received letters of intent from three major transmission companies, including American Superconductor Corporation (which owns a stake in Tres Amigas), and support from Connecticut-based investment and advisory firm Alt Energy, LLC.
Economic and financial advisory firm The Brattle Group recently gave the Tres Amigas project a 20-year window for an estimate that $250 billion in transmission investments would needed for the project plans to come to fruition.
Apart from the obvious gains in efficient power transfer and ability to deliver power from renewable sources in Middle America to other places, Tres Amigas' proposal would give electricity users a benefit from the energy transfers, and the New Mexico hub would narrow the price gap among the grids.
There are several issues that Harris and Tres Amigas realize are unavoidable in a proposal this ambitious, but the company is prepared to face barriers in their effort to spread green power from its sources via a cohesive grid to other places where it can be used efficiently.
The company's website is realistic and hopeful, and they articulate their mission much better than I could:
With innovation comes a certain amount of uncertainty. Currently the links among the three systems are almost non-existent, so any increase is likely to offer benefits. We will learn the size the benefits, and at what cost they can be achieved as new information emerges over time.
You can read more about the Tres Amigas Proposal at their website, here.
If Tres Amigas receives the support and funding they need to carry through the project, it seems the union of these grids would have strong positive implications for the renewable energy sector and the way American consumers receive and utilize power.
Brigid
Subscribe to