20% energy from Wind by 2030?

Sept 26 and Oct 9 will be Hans Detweiler's presentation on wind energy to the Illinois Renewable Energy Associations annual fair at Oregon, Illinois. According to Bob Vogl, Hans was one of the people that helped Bob & Sonia start the energy fair, now in its seventh year. He was formerly with the State of Illinois Climate Change Task Force and the Environmental Law and Policy Center, and is now with the American Wind Energy Association.

Hans summarized the recent AWEA and the Dept. of Energy report on how the U.S. can obtain 20% of it's electrical energy from wind by the year 2030. The major challenge seems not to be turbine site identification and construction, but re-configuring and updating the energy grid (think new generation DC long distance transmission) to get the electricity from the states where the wind is to the states where the load demand is. Robert Lieberman suggested in his presentation (airing Sept 15, 22) that, because of expense, there hasn't been much interest in the past in modernizing the national grid by the utilities that use it to buy and sell power. To get this done, there will need to be public support, and two senate bills are intended to assist this with this.