Wind on the Wires1 - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 140

facilitate wind development has been an ongoing challenge (Vajjhala and Fischbeck 2007 ,
Klass and Wilson 2012 ). Congress attempted to address this issue in the Energy Policy
Act of 2005, by giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the
Department of Energy (DoE) the authority to identify and establish National Interest
Electric Transmission Corridors and establish fast-track siting procedures. This approach,
however, has not been successful; while the DoE identified corridors in the Southwest
and Mid-Atlantic, environmental groups challenged FERC's “fast-track” authority on the
grounds that it was bypassing state jurisdiction, infringing on property rights, and
overriding important environmental laws. In February 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled in favor of the environmental groups, effectively stalling the attempt to
streamline transmission-line expansion.
Interstate transmission planning has always been challenging in the United States and
efforts have devolved from a coordinated federal role toward encouraging Regional
Transmission Organizations (RTOs) or transmission coordinating councils to create
regional transmission plans in their service territories. FERC Order 1000 was the latest
attempt to encourage multistate coordination for transmission planning by addressing cost
allocation issues. This FERC order emphasized regional transmission planning to help
meet state public policy objectives such as state RPS or energy efficiency standards, in
addition to helping to achieve the traditional economic and reliability considerations that
have been the foundation of future grid-planning efforts (FERC 2011 ) .
6.3.3 From Transmission to Integration
While there are transmission challenges for wind development in many parts of the
country, federal efforts to help integrate wind power into the electric system operation
and power markets have also been crucial. In 2005, FERC adopted Orders 661 and
661A, which established technical standards and procedures for public utilities connecting
large wind projects (FERC 2005 , Porter et al. 2009 ). These standards were established
to ensure reliability as wind grew to be a more important energy source, and include
the low-voltage ride through, which requires wind generators to remain connected to the
grid for a certain time during system faults and low-voltage events. These standards also
included the power factor design criteria for reactive power and wind turbines. This order
also required wind plants to have SCADA capability and be able to receive instructions
- but transmission operators were not authorized to control wind plants. Additionally, the
wind developer was able to satisfy the interconnection request and enter the transmission
queuewithpreliminarydesignspecifications,withtheagreementtoprovidedetaileddesign
information six months later. Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) were required
to adopt these orders to overcome some of the barriers faced by wind developers. The