Eldorado-Ivanpah Transmission project

^Transmission lines in California's Ivanpah Valley at the site of a proposed giant solar thermal energy plant, with Primm, Nevada in the distance.

May 7, 2010 - Bureau of Land Management and California Public Utilities Commission Announce Availability of Draft Joint Environmental Review of Transmission Project in Mojave Desert.


The BLM, along with the California Public Utilities Commission, published a Notice of Availability of a draft joint environmental review on the impacts of a proposed electric transmission line in San Bernardino County, Calif. and Clark County, Nev. Southern California Edison has applied for a right-of-way (ROW) authorization to upgrade and replace approximately 35 miles of an existing 115-kilovolt (kV) transmission line on public lands with a new double circuit 230-kV transmission line. The proposed Eldorado-Ivanpah Transmission Project would handle electricity produced from several renewable energy project proposals in and around the Ivanpah Valley including the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generation System planned by Solar Partners, LLC, and NextLight Silver State photovoltaic project on the Nevada side.


http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/info/newsroom/2010/may/eldorado-ivanpah_draft_er.html

March 10, 2009 - Primm, Nevada

We attended an open house run by Southern California Edison Company (SCE), which is proposing to upgrade a transmission line, substation, and communication line in Clark County, southern Nevada, and eastern San Bernardino County, California in order to accomodate future industrial solar and wind energy projects. This would all be on public land under the jursidiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

A 35-mile stretch of existing 115 kilovolt (kV) powerline would be replaced with a larger 220 kV line, related to the planned 4,000 acre Ivanpah solar thermal development. A new transmission line would have to be built across McCullough Pass in the McCullough Range in Nevada, just south of Sloan Canyon BLM special petroglyph area, to connect with the Boulder City "green zone" where two solar energy plants already exist: Nevada Solar 1 and Sempra photovoltaic plant. Two local natural gas-burning power plants would also be interconnected, Bighorn power plant near Primm, and the Eldorado plant near Boulder City, Nevada.

Banking on the future of California's renewable energy goals, Edison expects their new lines to be able to carry power that can handle three times the capacity of the proposed Ivanpah solar facility. Their brochure says a benefit of the project would be to "enable Nevada to export clean electricity to California."

Although most of the right-of-ways and upgrades are in Nevada, the power from this project will ALL go to California according to Southern California Edison. The entire upgrade is being paid for by California rate payers. The rep from SCE told us that this project alone would make the rates of SCE go up about 5 to 10 cents per power bill per customer. He said that each additional project that would require an upgrade would also add to the power bills.

All this intermittent wind and solar energy will need more baseload said SCE representatives -- more natural gas-burning power plants will have to be built. Hoover dam will not be able to carry it all, according to an Edison engineer. He told us that there is no way to store wind/solar power yet, only ideas like compressed air, or storing electricity in a giant salt pond like a battery with low gradient, but all these methods will be inefficient and are years away. When asked how many years away this technology for storage could be, he said "I have no idea."


^The "open house" held by Southern California Edison at Primm, Nevada. People sat at the table on the right to pen comments.

^Map showing the proposed solar thermal (yellow) and wind (blue) projects on the California/Nevada border south of Las Vegas. The dark line is the proposed SCE transmission line upgrade.

Greenhouse Gases Given Off by Powerlines

Southern California Edison says the new transmission lines will "support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," according to their leaflet.

But despite the touted lessening of the need for greenhouse gas-spewing coal-burning power plants (but not natural gas-burning plants) and their replacement by renewables, other problems are created. According to the EPA, sulfur hexaflouride (SF6) is the most potent greenhouse gas studied to date, with a global warming impact of 23,900 times CO2, and a much longer lifespan (estimated at 3,200 years, compared to CO2's 50-200 years). Almost all of it is used and emitted in electrical transmission and distribution, with big spikes in emissions during construction of lines. SF6 is used as an insulator in high-voltage (35 kV and above) circuit breakers, switchgear, and other electrical equipment.

The EPA says that "the electric power industry uses a significant percentage of the SF6 produced worldwide each year. Under ideal operating conditions, SF6 would remain entirely contained within the transmission and distribution equipment. However, during real-world equipment operation, maintenance, and SF6 recycling activities, gas is emitted into the atmosphere. Fugitive emissions of SF6 can escape from gas-insulated substations and switchgear through seals, especially from older equipment. It can also be released during equipment installation and when equipment is opened for servicing. In 1998, U.S. emissions of SF6 were estimated at 10 million metric tons of carbon equivalent (MMTCE). A significant percentage of these emissions are attributable to the electric power industry."

The cumulative damage done by SF6 is as yet unknown, but utilities are trying to reduce its release by "voluntary measures" in the utility industry (which has coincided with a steep price hike in SF6), and this has been successful for those companies which volunteered.

In California not much new grid has been built since the 1970s, so even though the voluntary emissions control resulted in dropping overall emissions numbers, one has to consider this huge push for huge new transmission, and how that will create construction-related spikes in emissions, leaks from decommissioning old lines, as well as the ongoing leaks from transformers and insulators.

Currently, the radiative forcing impact of SF6 is small, but it has a significant growth rate, extremely long atmospheric lifetime, and is a strong absorber of infrared radiation, and therefore has the potential to influence climate far into the future, according to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change in 2001.

The San Diego Gas & Electric Company's Sunrise Powerlink Project Draft Environmental Impact Report / Environmental Impact Statement considered SF6 emissions a non-mitigatable adverse impact of the powerline, that would require a minimum of 12 years of the line being used 100% for renewables (impossible) before it could zero out the emissions from the line itself (not counting the emissions from the power plants or lost natural CO2 sinks full of living desert plants). Any renewable power plant that requires a new powerline, it would seem, is going to never recoup the emissions from the powerline itself, not to mention never offsetting any coal or gas after that.

Our point is that we need to raise serious questions about SF6 emissions and how serious (and permanent) they are, and how they are very likely to cancel out or at least GREATLY diminish any global warming reductions from remote renewable power plants. If people are serious about global warming they should not GREATLY increase greenhouse gas emissions while killing our wilderness and better choose the smart solution.

^Existing powerlines at the proposed Ivanpah solar thermal plant, heading towards Primm, Nevada in the distance, and then over the mountains to the Boulder City "green zone."

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