'Electrical utilities have been caught flat-footed by the falling costs and rapid growth of renewable energy,' Justin Gillis and Tyler H. Norris write. 'They simply failed to get ahead of the wave and upgrade their wires.'
By Justin Gillis and Tyler H. Norris | For The New York TimesFor generations, tobacco was the king of crops in the region known as the Carolina Sandhills, the best way to coax cash out of the sandy soil. But the long decline of smoking in America idled many tobacco fields, and now farmers are eyeing a new crop.
You may have heard about the need for huge, continent-spanning power lines, operating at 500,000 volts or higher, that can carry enormous amounts of renewable energy from one region of North America to another. That need is real, and likely to become acute by the 2030s, but it is not what we are talking about here.
The problem is relatively easy to fix. The public rarely objects when old electric cables are swapped out for new ones along existing corridors. But the new technology does require investment, and that is the nub of the issue. In the Carolinas, Duke Energy, which operates two of the region’s largest utilities, has finally come to recognize the need for upgrades. As a first step to tackle the problem, it wants to spend $560 million revamping power lines in a region it calls the “red zone,” which includes the Sandhills and much of the surrounding coastal plain in the Carolinas.
We think it is reasonable to spread the costs of transmission improvements among all electric customers, as Texas did a decade ago, when it built major new power lines to move clean energy to market. Instead, power companies are often trying to charge these upgrade costs entirely to the developers of wind and solar projects, ignoring the broad benefits.
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