8/13/2023 0 Comments Grid ig storyMore than four years later, SPP replied.ĬAROLINE HERRON: And it was just a kick in the gut.ĬHARLES: This is Caroline Herron, a consultant who's been working with Lyle Jack on this project. The Oceti Sakowin Power Authority submitted its request to SPP in 2017. And a very important point - if you are building a wind farm and it's going to need some bigger power lines, you have to pay for them, which can make or break a project. And so we have to identify a fix.ĬHARLES: The fix might be a bigger power line, new transformers. KELLEY: So we identify that there's a line that's overloaded, a transformer that's overloaded, a stability problem that occurs on the grid. They use computer simulations to see what happens in an imaginary world when they hook up new wind and solar farms. Engineers like David have to figure out whether they can do that safely. And David Kelley, the vice president of engineering at SPP, says they have competition.ĭAVID KELLEY: So these two projects that you mentioned - they are just two of, you know, just really hundreds of projects that are trying to be developed.ĬHARLES: Across the country, it's thousands waiting in a long line called the interconnection queue, trying to get permission to connect to the grid. But to connect their windmills to power lines, to send their clean electricity out into the world, they need permission in advance from the organization that manages the electricity grid in this region, the Southwest Power Pool, or SPP. The Saudi Arabia of wind, they call it.ĬHARLES: Lyle convinced a majority of the Native tribes in South Dakota to join forces and create a wind power company, the Oceti Sakowin Power Authority. LYLE JACK: The turbines will be out by about northwest of here all through this area out here and over.ĬHARLES: It makes sense. Dan Charles from NPR's Planet Money team looked into the reasons why.ĭAN CHARLES, BYLINE: Lyle Jack wants to build a wind farm here on the grassy hills of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. They can't get connected to the electric grid. But many are running into a big obstacle. Companies are drawing up plans for thousands of wind and solar projects across the country. The dream of clean energy is slowly becoming a reality.
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