Out in the Wilderness

What if you built a huge power plant and then couldn’t connect it to the grid?

That’s apparently a growing problem for some alternative energy projects. Wind farms must be installed in places where the wind blows and there’s enough room for dozens, or hundreds of turbines. Solar installations also take up a lot of space.

As a result, many of these projects end up far from major cities, often in undeveloped areas, and sometimes close to wilderness areas. The issue is that these plants eventually need to be connected to power companies’ lines, which requires some pretty major wiring stretching out to the middle of nowhere.

San Diego Gas & Electric is facing heat over plans to build a huge solar/wind/geothermal plant in the middle of the Southern California desert, and then string power transmission lines back to the city, 150 miles away, including a 23-mile stretch cutting right through a popular state park.

A Southern California Edison executive sums up the conflict succinctly in an AP article. “It’s a trade-off. Clean energy requires building infrastructure in potentially sensitive areas. There’s no way around it.”

Environmentalists just don’t know what side to pick in this fight.