I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Green power is taking a step forward. And Clovis, N.M., is at the center of the progress.
A flurry of stories over the past 24 hours, from national news organizations like Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, have been published profiling the Tres Amigas Project.
What’s the Tres Amigas project? It may well be the answer — or at least part of the answer its developers hope — to getting energy, including energy from renewable sources like wind and solar, flowing around the U.S. with greater ease. In short, the Tres Amigas project in Clovis may help connect the U.S. three energy grids — the Eastern, Western and Texas.
This is how Reuters explains the Tres Amigas superstation:
Power transfer between any two of the
Interconnections … can only be accomplished through special power electronic conversion stations. This is commonly achieved by first converting AC power in one grid to DC as an intermediate power form at a substation, then
reconverting from DC back to AC before reaching the adjacent grid. This, in effect, synchronizes power flows. While there are several relatively small bilateral “DC Links” existing today between two Interconnections, all three Interconnections have never been united by one system.
The Tres Amigas SuperStation will act as a power market hub, enabling the buying and selling of electricity between the nation`s three Interconnections, the Reuters story goes on to explain.
Wind, solar, hydro and geothermal renewable energy sources that do not currently have access to transmission lines and/or customers will be
able to tap into multiple markets through the Tres Amigas SuperStation. For example, regions rich in solar energy will be able to buy electricity at night, when the sun is not shining, from regions rich in wind energy. As a merchant
transmission system, Tres Amigas will charge a fee for usage of the power hub.
Clovis, N.M., has easy access to all three of the nation`s power grids, Reuters reports, and the New Mexico State Land Office already has granted Tres Amigas, LLC the right to lease 14,400 acres (22.5 square miles) of land in the city for this system.
The proposed substation, functioning like a traffic roundabout, would use superconducting cable from American Superconductor Corp. of Devens, Mass., capable of carrying 5,000 megawatts of electricity — equivalent to the output of five nuclear-power reactors, the Wall Street Journal explains in its own story.
Superconducting cable is chilled to minus-300 degrees Fahrenheit, which greatly increases its carrying capacity, and the rights-of-way the cable requires along its path are smaller — and cheaper.
The Tres Amigas substation would use novel technology to solve a basic problem: that power can’t easily flow among the three grids because they aren’t synchronized. It would convert the alternating current of each region into a common direct current. Then it would convert specific electrons back into alternating current to match the grid to which the electrons were destined.
But there could be hurdles before Tres Amigas goes online and fulfills what its developers hope is its enormous potential, reports the Journal.
The project still is in an early stage and could
unravel if it is unable to obtain financing. It also faces regulatory hurdles, since the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is being asked to waive jurisdiction over power sales in and out of Texas. Because Texas removed most electrical connections to other states decades ago, most of its wholesale power sales aren’t subject to FERC regulation.
