Sep 2, 2009
DMN: ETT to install Texas’ first transmission line battery
ETT to install Texas' first transmission line battery, and why this has anything to do with your life2:16 PM Wed, Sep 02, 2009
by: Elizabeth Souder/Reporter
Electric Transmission Texas LLC plans to install a battery on a new transmission line to remote Presidio, Texas, the first such battery in the state.
This affects your life in two ways. First, if you live within the Texas grid, operated by the Electric Reliabilty Council of Texas, you're probably going to help pay for the $23 million piece of new technology.
Second, battery technology, once it's fully developed, could allow homes and businesses to ride out an outage without a blip, and even help Texans make better use of cheap wind power.
Presidio, a town of 7,713 people living on the Mexican board, just west of Big Bend Ranch State Park, is served by only one transmission line. The line was built in 1948. As you might imagine, the lights in Presidio sometimes flicker.
ETT, a joint venture of AEP and MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., plans to replace the transmission line and add a battery that will allow Presidio to continue to get juice if the transmission line fails.
The new transmission line will cost about $44 million, and the battery will cost around $23 million. ETT President Calvin Crowder said transmission project costs are spread among all customers on the Texas grid, and he plans to file with regulators to recover the cost of the project from ratepayers.
That's why Crowder made sure that the Public Utility Commission would consider such a battery to be part of the transmission equipment, rather than a power generation tool. Transmission lines are fully regulated, so the PUC allows companies to recoup the cost of those assets plus a profit in electricity rates.
Power generation has been deregulated. Generators must pay for their equipment on their own, and hope to recoup the cost by selling electricity into the market.
But Presidio has a special circumstance because it is so remote. The line requires a battery just to keep the lights on, Crowder said.
"I looked at the ERCOT map and I didn't see any other city that was as remote and radial as this one. So I don't know that there ar e a lot of transmission applications for this one," he said, adding: "In the long-run the commercial aspects of batteries are probably most interesting, especially because of the intermittent nature of wind."
A company could install a battery and buy power at night, when wind turbines generate the cheapest juice, then sell it on the wholesale market the following afternoon, when power prices peak. If enough batteries are installed, this could help bring down the cost of power at peak times, while encouraging more non-polluting wind power at night.
If batteries become cheap enough, a home or business could install one to sustain it through a power outage. A battery could even one day work with a sophisticated electricity meter to store up cheap power at night to be used during the late afternoon, shielding the homeowner from peak power prices
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