The message gets repetitious: There needs to be more electrical power transmission capacity in and from North Dakota ... more transmission capacity ... more ... So, isn't the answer as simple as stringing a bunch of lines? The fact is, no. The power has to have somewhere to go and must travel by an extraordinarily complex network of technology. For our area it's managed by a strange entity called the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator. ...The snag is the process of hooking in a new power source. ...Midwest's queue has 224 wind projects, a 64 percent increase in one year. Not all will make it through the process; actually only 32 percent will end up connecting and producing. About 40 percent of requests drop out before even commencing the required FERC study. And 10 percent of those in the queue don't help matters at all, because they're just sitting on approvals ...

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was an attempt to pave the way - almost literally - for energy companies to take advantage of pre-approved corridors that cut through public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The problem is that much of the land that would be pre-approved is in sensitive wildlife habitat and cherished wildlands. Routes were chosen more with an eye to economic efficiencies than environmental impacts, and the result is a plan that is blatantly skewed to favor the interests of the energy companies over the interests of the general public. ...The Energy Department recently released a draft of its Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and will be accepting public comment on the statement until mid-February. It plans to hold a public meeting in Helena on Jan. 29, but you can provide your comments now by going to its Web site at corridoreis.anl.gov. We hope Montanans from all over the state will take the opportunity to firmly oppose the plan as it's currently proposed, because it will take all of Montana to sink this awful idea.

Environmental groups are not concerned with energy costs to low-, fixed- or middle-income citizens. Their only mission is to ban coal use. They don't care if the new coal steam plants are very clean. They don't care that by capturing half of the carbon dioxide, a coal plant is comparable to a gas plant. Environmental groups are insisting that electric generating plants be natural gas or a wind/natural gas combination. By the way, wind coupled with natural gas is more expensive than straight natural gas generation and always will be.

As we look to increase the use of wind power, some discussion about the suitability of specific sites for wind development makes sense. Just as there are a lot of opportunities in the state for wind energy development, there are also some places that are better left as they are today. That's the crux of the concern that The Wilderness Society and other conservation and sportsmen organizations expressed concerning a proposed wind project in Valley County. A Texas-based company, Wind Hunter, proposed developing a 20,000-acre project on Bureau of Land Management, state and private land that included 334 turbines and a new 34-mile transmission line. The project was proposed for development immediately adjacent to one of the most remote, wild, and picturesque places left on America's northern prairie, the Bitter Creek Wilderness Study Area/Area of Critical Environmental Concern.

We're all for energy conservation and alternative energy sources being brought online as part of an overall U.S. energy strategy that also includes developing traditional energy sources, regardless of opposition from the enviro-regulation litigation industry. But reality has to fit in that strategy somewhere, not just feel-good rhetoric.

The Rahall plan may not be the final answer, but a gold-rush mentality that promotes such huge numbers of heavily-subsidized, industrial-scale wind farms with no controls on industry is not a good answer either. As a first-draft work-in-progress, Rahall's proposal might just be a step in the right direction.

Wind is a great source of power. It is clean and plentiful. But it is hard to rely on as a major power source unless you figure out where to get power when the wind isn't blowing. In the power industry this is called "firming." NorthWestern Energy firms the power from the Judith Gap Wind Farm by purchasing contracts from other power companies. The problem is the contracts are not long-term and the prices are not stable....On the other hand, wind blows when we don't need power.

Brad Molnar was the only public service commissioner with the courage to vote against this feel-good idea, and he has been proven right. We need four more commissioners just like him.

Jan Falstad said that wind had gone from being "technologically challenged and too expensive - to being a popular and mandated goal." Perhaps more accurately, it should have read, "Wind has gone from being technically challenged and too expensive - to being technically challenged, mandated and taxpayer subsidized."

A staffer at the Helena-based Montana Environmental Information Center recently professed mystification over state energy policy. “I don't know why we're not putting as much energy behind wind development as we are to coal development,” he said. The answer is simple. Most people want the lights to come on when they flip the switch, and they don't want to go broke when they do.

...because of reliability problems, wind power must be supported by more traditional and reliable sources of generation, such as hydroelectric, coal-fired, nuclear, and natural gas generation. Wind generation is intermittent and sometimes poses challenges to load schedulers who manage the transmission grid systems.

And, while I agree with Mr. Shutkin that wind power, as a source of clean and renewable energy, should and will play a role in our future energy portfolio, its role will necessarily be small because of its fundamental limitation as an energy source: wind power is ‘intermittent’, i.e. it provides energy only when the wind blows, and, as such, wind power is a source of supplemental, not ‘base load’ energy.