Madison’s Beltline — the major thoroughfare that cuts through the city — is flanked by massive metal structures transmitting electricity faster than the moving cars they tower over.
These high-voltage electric transmission lines were planned, built and are managed by the American Transmission Company (ATC), a stand-alone transmission company that services most of Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and parts of Illinois and Minnesota.
Bob McKee, manager of Regulatory Relations and Policy at ATC, describes his company as a middleman. “We deliver energy from where it’s generated to where it’s used,” says McKee. “We are the link between generators and load-serving entities like Madison Gas and Electric — a customer of ours.”
But the electric industry is being disrupted, as new forms of power generation, like solar panels and wind turbines, begin to replace coal and gas power plants. These new power sources tend to be decentralized, scattered throughout a community, which fundamentally changes the grid makeup.
These generational changes will be part of a panel discussion during the 2015 Energy Summit, hosted by the Wisconsin Energy Institute at Union South on Oct. 13. Flora Flygt, ATC’s strategic planning and policy adviser, will be one of the panelists, along with Jeffrey Ripp, the administrator of the division of energy regulation at the Public Service Commission, and others.
In Wisconsin, coal remains king, generating 62% of the state’s net electricity in 2013. Only 6.9% of the state’s electricity came from renewable energy resources like wind, biomass and hydro.
The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is pushing states to adapt new energy sources. It gave Wisconsin a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030.
While Gov. Scott Walker has criticized the plan, McKee says his company is staying neutral. “In terms of the merits of the Clean Power Plan, we’re not taking a position,” says McKee. “Our primary position has been that we want to ensure, with whatever approach is taken, that reliability of the electric grid is preserved.”
ATC’s Flygt explains that the transmission is not tasked with deciding how Wisconsin will meet the Clean Power Plan’s goals.
“Utilities are the ones that will determine how to meet the Clean Power Plan’s goals,” says Flygt. In doing so, they may shut down coal plants, build new natural gas plants or even tap into wind farms. These are the decisions ATC will be tracking.
“When you close down a power plant, it has an impact on the grid because you’re no longer putting power into the grid at that point, and when you build a new plant you have to interconnect it to the grid,” Flygt says. “Those are the sorts of transmission issues we want to understand as soon as we can.”
Andy Olsen, senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, says that transmission companies can do a lot to ensure that cleaner forms of energy are utilized.
“Transmission is one of many strategies to help develop renewable electricity and increase the total share of renewable power,” he says. “Along with that, we also need local renewable energy production — and support for distributed generation like rooftop solar.”
According to both McKee and Flygt, it’s not the requirements of the plan that pose a challenge — it’s the timeline.
“The actual building of the transmission once you have the permit takes one to two years,” says Flygt. “But the planning and the permitting process can take anywhere from three to eight years.”
Regardless of how electricity is generated, once it reaches transmission it’s all the same. “An electron is an electron,” says McKee, laughing.
“Our job hasn’t changed because of the Clean Power Plan,” says McKee. “The Clean Power Plan certainly poses some challenges, but we’ll always face challenges. Today it’s the Clean Power Plan, but tomorrow it’ll be something else, so we’ll use the approaches we’ve relied on historically to address those and meet the needs of our customers.”