Planning for Future Power Needs in the Sun Valley Area – Part VII

The Community Advisory Committee, working with Idaho Power to develop a “Wood River Electrical Plan,” held its seventh and potentially final meeting last week. My six previous reports are available here (#6), here (#5), here (#4), here (#3), here (#2), and here (#1).

The purpose of the project is to create a clear and documented electrical energy plan to serve the load needs of the Wood River Valley from now through build out of the valley. The opportunities for tapping into alternative sources of energy are very good as they become available. The challenge of course, is getting the power into the upper valley where it is heavily used to support the tourism and second home industry. As the use increases, so does the need for transmission lines, so there are visual trade-offs which must be considered.

The purpose of the seventh meeting was to review the draft plan and discuss next steps for its introduction to the community. The Committee determined that the draft could use some revisions in its presentation to be more easily understood by the public and that the text could be expanded to better address conservation and alternative energy issues discussed by the Committee.

We had a considerable discussion re-checking and verifying the recommendations and assumptions made in earlier meetings regarding the alternatives being proposed. Our goal is to make sure the report is clear and concise – something that will make sense to the public in terms of need, reliability, redundancy, cost, protection of view corridors, etc. before Idaho Power begins public hearings.

Idaho Power staff will revise the draft, we will then give it another review and the hope is to present it sometime after the Christmas holidays during a public open house meeting(s).

As always, I will continue to report on our progress and you can also follow it at the Wood River Electrical Plan website provided by Idaho Power. The website has a great deal of information, including copies of all the presentations and minutes of our meetings.

Sidebar – Solar Possibilities:

The world’s third-largest solar power plant is located south of here in Boulder City, Nevada. The plant, owned by a Spanish company, produces around 64 MW (Mega Watts) of electricity which is enough to power 40,000 homes. It is located on 350 acres. (As a footnote – the Wood River Valley currently uses just under 120 MW at peak load in the winter.)

Here is a link to an Editorial in the Las Vegas Sun about the plant from this past Sunday.

Here is a link to “The Energy Blog” which has a story about the Boulder City solar plant.

Sidebar – Wind Possibilities:

Speaking of the Las Vegas area – on a trip this past spring, I came across this wind turbine in the backyard of a home in southwest Vegas near Blue Diamond Road. Thinking it was a novel way of using alternative energy I had to snap the picture.

 

In case you didn’t see my first report on the Wood River Electrical Plan meeting, it contains links to three videos taken at the Fossil Gulch Wind Park near Hagerman. The southern part of Idaho seems to be an excellent location for “wind farms” given the topography and sustained wind flows. Click here to see the videos.