If You Love Wind Power (And Solar Power), You’d Better At Least Like Transmission.

Sales bookings last year for Bob Chew and his company SolarWrights were $5.9 million, more than double the year before. He expects to hit $20 million this year.

From New York Times/Science :

If you love wind power (and solar power), you’d better at least like transmission. This was originally recited to me as kind of an energy-wonk joke. But it’s no laughing matter, as my colleague Matt Wald points out in an article today on new evidence that the country’s grid is already stretched to the limit and unlikely to be able to handle bigger, intermittent pulses of electricity from wind turbines and big solar-power arrays.

Here’s the lede:

WASHINGTON — Adding electricity from the wind and the sun could increase the frequency of blackouts and reduce the reliability of the nation’s electrical grid, an industry report says. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation says in a report scheduled for release Monday that unless appropriate measures are taken to improve transmission of electricity, rules reducing carbon dioxide emissions by utilities could impair the reliability of the power grid. The corporation is the industry body authorized by the federal government to enforce reliability rules for the interlocking system of electrical power generation and transmission.

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