Tehachapi News

Wind energy gets boost with major transmission line

larger view

Wind turbines can capture the wind and turn it into electricity, but without a way to send the power to users far away, it is just hot air. The blades might as well be giant fans cooling off the horses in Wild Horse Canyon.

Southern California Edison, spurred by unshakable mandates from the state to purchase 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2010, is building a transmission line that will carry as much as 4,500 megawatts of “green” power from the wind-rich Tehachapi hills south on 250 miles of new and upgraded equipment to the termination station in Ontario.

It is one of the largest renewable energy transmission line projects in the United States.

The line is called the Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project  (TRPD).  Its northernmost outpost will be on a 20-acre property east of Tehachapi Willow Springs Road on the rural extension of Highline Road.

The transmission substation is named Highwind. Another new substation, named Windhub, is to be built on Oak Creek Road near Mojave.

Wind power will flow into the Highwind substation, move along 9.6 miles of new transmission lines to Windhub, travel to the Antelope distribution station in Lancaster and sent from there south to the population centers “down below.”

In the mysterious way of the power grid, some of that power will flow back to Tehachapi to light our homes and offices.

After years of planning, Edison is poised to get California's OK to begin construction on the local segment in a month.  The segment should be operational by the first quarter of 2010.

In documents tracing the progress of the $2 billion project, which is  one part of Southern California Edison's current $5 billion upgrade, the line originally was called the Antelope Transmission Project. No one seems to know why the name was changed, except perhaps someone in the Southern California Edison Department of Naming Things. Apparently the person recognized that Tehachapi has the cache and, in the world of wind energy,  the history and the spirit.

The local segment of the transmission line will snake through the bucolic turbine-covered hills from Highwind to Windhub. In California fashion, the gatekeeper Public Utilities Commission decreed that the structures must be pleasing to the eye and must fit the terrain.

“The poles are a unique design that we've never used before,” said transmission line Segments 1-3 Project Manager Don Johnson in an exclusive interview with the Tehachapi News. “They are kind of in the shape of a 'Y.' The visual consultant at the PUC said they should blend in with the wind farms. They were chosen for their aesthetic design. It was one of the mitigation measures.”

The PUC granted overall project approval in the form of a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity March 13, 2008, for segment 1 (Antelope substation in Lancaster to Pardee substation in Santa Clarita) and segment 2 (Antelope substation to the Vincent substation south of Palmdale).

The majority of required reports that will have been submitted for Segment 3, from Lancaster to Tehachapi's Highwind, Johnson said.

“We expect approval within the next 30 days,” he said. Approval means construction can begin.

Edison is negotiating with some landowners who own property over which the transmission is engineered to go.

“We are acquiring easements,” Johnson said. “We compensate the landowners. Most of the time there is an agreement. If we cannot reach an agreement, Edison has the power of eminent domain. Sometimes we exercise that right.”

The only federal land the transmission line will cross is the Angeles National Forest, south of the Antelope Valley.

Cathy Hart, Southern California Edison's region manager, public affairs, said that Edison is arranging a “marshalling yard” in the city of Tehachapi to stockpile material and equipment for the substation and the transmission lines.

The substation itself will look similar to several smaller substations that already are in place in the Tehachapi valleys, only a bit bigger. The Highwind substation, where the electrical power coming in from the turbines will be stepped down to a manageable 220 kilovolts, will feature steel support structures, electrical equipment, transformers and circuit breakers.

The Lehigh Southwest Cement plant has its own substation not far from the site of the new Highwind.

Edison currently purchases from 700 to 1,000 megawatts of power from Tehachapi wind farms. To help meet its renewable energy mandate, Hart said, “Our goal is to pull 4,500 megawatts out of the Tehachapi wind parks.”

While it has made sizeable contracts with wind energy companies, Edison needs to purchase more. Wind energy companies are responding by planning expansion, which is slowed by the lengthy environmental reports.

Oak Creek Energy Systems has partnered with Terra-Gen Power to form Alta Innovative Power Company, which has a contract to provide as much as 1,500 megawatts of power to Southern California Edison.

Ed Duggan, executive vice president of Oak Creek Energy Systems, said the company has 58 megawatts of wind turbines installed, an application pending with Kern County for 600 megawatts more, and “We hope ultimately to develop the whole 1,500 megawatts.”

The application process, he said, takes one to two years, and must be done “in an orderly fashion.”

Hart explained that one megawatt - which is a million watts - will power 650 homes.
“Times that by 4,500 and you see what it means,” she said. [answer 2,925,000 homes].

Southern California Edison is closer to the meeting its renewable energy component than the other two large California Investor Owned Utilities, at 15.7 percent in 2007. Pacific Gas & Electric is at 11.4 percent and San Diego Gas & Electric is at 5.2 percent.

Almost half of  Edison’s renewable energy is from geothermal sources at Mammoth Lakes, Hart said.