America�s future wind web?

Staff writer Mark Clayton discusses the debate going on in the Midwestern US over power transmission lines for wind turbines.

Staff writer Mark Clayton

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MADISON, S.D.

Out across this wind-swept, wheat-growing state, Jeffrey Nelson sees a new crop rising � electricity from the world�s largest wind-turbine farms sending electrons thousands of miles east to Chicago or Boston.

But it�s a vision the South Dakota Wind Energy Association president says will never happen without something far larger, more controversial, and even more expensive: gigantic new high-voltage transmission lines.

Depending on whom you talk to, emerging plans to build 765,000 volt transmission lines to bring power from the �Saudi Arabia of wind� in the Dakotas to population centers in the Midwest and East Coast are either vital to the nation or a boondoggle waiting to happen.

�This state has vast resources it can�t use without building new power lines,� says Mr. Nelson, gesturing at lines on a grid map at the East River Electric Power Cooperative in Madison, where he is manager. �These high-voltage lines are like farm-to-market roads, but instead of wheat, it�s electricity being transported. We need to think in those terms.�
Many are clearly doing just that.

With political winds blowing toward renewable energy, power-line proposals are popping up to carry wind power around the country. President Obama has said he wants to see renewable wind from the plains help power cities like Chicago. The US Department of Energy last year reported that the nation could harvest 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2020, much of it by tapping wind energy in places like South Dakota, which boasts the fourth best wind resource in the nation.