Barry Smitherman - The Switch Interview

- [Dr. Scott Tinker] What are the different fuels that we use to make electricity? - [Barry Smitherman] In America, 50% of the electricity comes from coal, 20% comes from natural gas, 20% from nuclear, and about 6% or 7% from hydro, and then 1% or 2% from sun and wind. Unfortunately, solar and wind are rounding errors today, when it comes to the total composition of how we produce electricity. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Is 50% coal, is that our capacity or what we actually use every year? - [Barry Smitherman] Well the coal runs almost 24/7. That is one of our baseloads, that and nuclear. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] So when you say baseloads, what does that mean? - [Barry Smitherman] It means that is the resource that is running all the time, even when we're using a minimum amount. The units that will not run all the time are gonna be the gas plants, and the wind, and the sun. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] And why do we pick coal and nuclear to run all the time? - [Barry Smitherman] I think a couple things. One, historically, coal has been really cheap, so it makes sense to run the cheapest commodity the most time. Secondly, once you've got a coal plant up and running, they're not really designed to turn down. They're designed to run flat out, that's the way they work the best. That's the same with a nuclear plant, they're designed to turn on and run, and that's what they do. Now a gas plant is a lot easier. You can turn it up, you can bring it back down with relative ease, and that's the kinda the role that it plays. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] And it's just more flexible that way? Is it part of the design? - [Barry Smitherman] It is more flexible. Plus just the nature of natural gas gives you the ability to add more to it quickly, get the water up hotter, bring on another unit. Many of the natural gas plants are a series of small units put next to each other. So you could be running two of 'em, and then add two more fairly quickly, and bring the full capacity of that plant up. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Tell me how the electric grid works. Is it connected everywhere in the US? - [Barry Smitherman] They're not connected. And this is really interesting because in America we have three electric grids. We have the eastern grid, which is mainly the Midwest states and everything to the Atlantic Ocean. We have the western grid, which is sort of goin' from the Rocky Mountains west to the Pacific. And then we have the grid in Texas, which is not interconnected with the other two. And one of the interesting debates that's goin' on around the country is, should the grids be interconnected? Would it make sense for them to be interconnected? Well I think a lot of it revolves around, how do we maximize our renewable potential? Because if the middle part of the country is where most of the wind is, and really from the panhandle of Texas up to the Canadian border are some of the best wind resources in North America. But not a lot of people live there. So we gotta figure out how to move that energy either to Los Angeles, or to the East Coast. Well if you're gonna move it to Los Angeles, you're going from one grid to another grid, so they're not interconnected today. That would be an issue. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] What's kinda the state of the transmission grid today in the country? - [Barry Smitherman] Well, it's not very robust. What has happened over time is, grids have built out around urban areas, because back in the day, 100 years ago, when we began to electrify, primarily you had a generation resource close to where people lived. So you'd have a coal or a gas plant close to where people live, and then you didn't have to string much wire. And we sort of expanded out from that. Now, with renewables, since we know where the wind is, and for the most part, the sun is located in areas where people don't live too, we're going to have to build a lot of long-haul transmission. And as a country, we have not made that decision. We've made that decision here in Texas, and we're doin' that. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] You say we've made that decision. What are we doin' here in Texas? We have a lot of wind. - [Barry Smitherman] We do, we have some of the best wind resources around, and so we went out and surveyed West Texas and the panhandle, we found the best wind areas, and then we came up with a plan to build transmission out to those areas, which are remote and a long way, and deliver it back in to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. That plan is 2,300 miles of high-capacity transmission. It's about $5 billion. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Whew. - [Barry Smitherman] And we're gonna have it completed by the end of 2013. It's the biggest renewable energy infrastructure project maybe in the history of America. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] And who pays for that? - [Barry Smitherman] In Texas we made a decision back in 1999 that we were going to share the cost of transmission, and place it on every consumer of electricity. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Which is everybody. - [Barry Smitherman] Everybody, based upon their consumption. So if you consume a little bit, you pay a little bit. If you consume a lot, you pay a lot. We estimate that when we get it all built out, and the utilities start putting in rates, it'll be about $4 a month for the average customer in Texas. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Is this something that the federal government's looking into, is Texas model for that exportable to the nation? - [Barry Smitherman] We are hoping to create 18 to 19,000 megawatts of wind, and get to 20% to 25% of our electricity coming from wind. If the country wanted to do that, they oughta do at least 10 times that amount. I wish the country would really look at what we're doin' and make a commitment to string in some wire from the middle part of the country to the west and the east because that is going to be required if we're serious about wind renewables. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Could they just follow the interstate highway system with these big power transmission lines? - [Barry Smitherman] It's possible. We're looking at that here for a couple of the long run lines that we're contemplating going from San Antonio out to West Texas. Can we go down I-10? Could we go up I-35? It's possible. You gotta see how much right-of-way is available. And I don't know if the Department of Transportation will allow us to put the poles in the median, because we gotta service 'em. But what happens if an 18-wheeler wrecks, and runs into the poles, and they fall down on people, and they get electrocuted? So there are some issues, but taking advantage of a place that already has infrastructure is a good idea. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] So this transmission grid is critical. What is it gonna take to make it work together? It sounds like there's more intermittent, there's baseload. - [Barry Smitherman] The challenge is, the wind tends to blow at night and in the early morning. We tend to consume most of our electricity in the middle of the afternoon. The wind blows more in the spring and fall. We consume most of our electricity in the middle of summer. When the wind stops blowing, we have to bring up either gas units or some other units to keep the grid stable and meet the demand. So if we get storage, which has kinda been the holy grail of electricity-- - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Electricity storage? - [Barry Smitherman] Yes. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] Okay. - [Barry Smitherman] Most people don't know, today we can't store electricity. - [Dr. Scott Tinker] So we don't have a battery that's any good? - [Barry Smitherman] We have some small batteries. You know, you have the battery in your laptop. We're starting to see batteries in cars. But think about this. We put a storage technology next to a wind farm. As the wind's blowing, we're putting power into the technology, whether it's a battery, or underground pump storage. And when the wind stops blowing, we release it, put it on the grid. Suddenly, that variable resource is no longer variable. So if we could store it when it's blowing, release it when it's not, then suddenly we smooth everything out. We're getting smarter. The grid is getting smarter, and our people are getting smarter. One of the interesting thin