Northwestern winds

Darin Huseby

enXco Inc., a subsidiary of French company EdF Energies Nouvelles (EDF-EN) that develops, constructs, operates and manages wind energy projects, landed in the Portland market in February 2007. Darin Huseby, who heads up the company’s business development office, is working to secure wind projects in an increasingly competitive market.

Based in North Palm Springs, Calif., enXco is the largest third-party operations and management provider for wind projects in the United States. It announced in August its parent company signed a contract with solar module manufacturer Phoenix-based First Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) to purchase solar modules with a generating capacity of 230 megawatts (MW) over the next five years [see “enXco pushes into PV market,” SI, September 2007].

Huseby discussed with Sustainable Industries the unique challenges facing the wind and solar industries today, the Pacific Northwest’s position in the national renewable energy market, and the need to find a balance between meeting the needs of property owners and meeting increasing energy demands.

SI: What are some of the unique challenges facing the wind energy industry today?

Huseby: The whole industry is being stretched as we struggle to keep up with a rapidly growing industry. We’re seeing some dramatic shortages in turbine supply and components. The shortages go beyond just physical equipment. They are also affecting human resources. Finding experienced people in project management, project development, construction management and in commercial negotiations can be a challenge. It’s not just here in the United States. We are being affected by the growth of the wind industry in Europe and Asia, which puts supply strains on both physical and human resources.

I do think there is some sign that the industry is starting to look outside the United States for certain technical positions because there is a dramatic shortage of them in the United States.

On the wind technician’s side, it is a big issue. EnXco, being the largest third-party wind operator in the world, thinks it’s very critical that we maintain and continue to grow our group of technicians. This year alone, we’ve hired over 50 new technicians for projects throughout the United States. We are participating in a couple of pilot programs with two community colleges, including Columbia Gorge Community College, to help train wind technicians [see “Green-collar jobs,” SI, September 2007].

You can imagine with the growth of the wind industry, there are going to be a lot more wind turbines out there to work on. There aren’t a lot of new operations companies springing up. In fact, the manufacturers of the wind turbines, who had been planning to perform operation and maintenance or at the very least do the warranty work through the first few years of a project’s operations, are starting to pull back from being in the operations and maintenance business. That’s leaving a void in the industry, and that’s a void that enXco has targeted as a business opportunity.

SI: Are any of these challenges magnified and or minimized in the Pacific Northwest region?

Huseby: By and large, there are two areas that I would say create unique challenges for the Northwest compared to other regions. First, we have complex geography here in the Northwest. We have mountains and valleys, and we have very different climate conditions on the west side of the Cascades compared to the east side of the Cascades. And the geographic differences become more pronounced in Idaho and Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

The result of the complex geography is that the wind doesn’t just flow evenly all over the place; there are certain specific pockets where the wind is most pronounced. When it comes to being close to where the demand centers are — near the cities of Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Boise — the ability to find good, windy sites is difficult. What you are going to see in the Northwest is a lot of clustering of wind projects to help meet some of the renewable portfolio standards (RPS) requirements.

That brings me to the second challenge in the Northwest that is unique compared to other parts of the country: the very complex and constrained transmission system that we have here. It’s very constrained; the lines are full in a lot of cases.

There are pathways where it’s virtually impossible to get any more megawatts through the line. There is a very deliberate, ongoing effort on the part of the utilities — in particular, the Bonneville Power Administration — and the independent power producers, which includes wind energy companies, to come up with solutions to overcome these transmission issues, come up with new pathways, build new lines, build new substations. These things are taking place, but it requires tremendous investment. It also takes a lot of time to build new transmission lines.

When you add the two main issues — location and transmission — it becomes very clear that your ability to site and construct wind projects in the areas where you can actually get wind and transmission is critical.

It brings to mind the issue in Kittitas Valley, where very recently the Kittitas Valley project that Horizon is building was approved for permit by Gov. Christine Gregoire [see “Wind prevails,” SI, November 2007]. Our Desert Claim project in Washington is undergoing the same process. As we look to build more and more wind projects to meet RPS requirements, locations such as Desert Claim are going to turn out to be extraordinarily rare and very important, and we need to be sure to utilize those resources because there are so few of them.

SI: With more and more companies competing for wind developments, is site planning becoming an increasing concern?

Huseby: We are certainly feeling a great deal of increased pressure for acquiring good sites. Since RPS passed in Oregon and Washington, there has been a rush of new investment and new focus on going out and getting new sites, not only by enXco, but by our competitors as well. It’s certainly having an impact on finding good locations. But you also have to take into account that we are starting to encroach on more populated areas. That is something that I think is going to be more common over time, and we have to go to the projects with both good wind and access to transmission. And sometimes, those sites are going to be closer to population centers. There’s going to have to be a regional dialogue that takes into account the fact that we need to make decisions about what is the best for the region as far as securing long-term, reasonable-cost energy supplies that are non-polluting.

SI: With a waiting list for wind turbines, is this the right time to offer solar as well?

Huseby: Absolutely. While wind will continue to be the major portion of our business for many years to come, some of the biggest areas for growth within enXco will come from solar and other technologies.

It was announced recently that we made a large purchase at our parent company level of 230 peak megawatts of solar modules. We made this a lot of the modules will be designated for projects in Europe, a great deal of them will come to the United States. We’re staffing up to have a national solar group and we’re aiming to have utility-scale projects in the 1 to 5 MW range, interconnected with utilities across the country, especially in locations where there are tax incentives and other types of incentives in place to encourage such development.

SI: What R&D needs do you think must be met in the coming years to help the overall growth of the wind and solar industries?

Huseby: Both PV and concentrated solar will benefit from increased R&D mostly in improving manufacturing processes to bring the costs of the panels or other technologies down. While R&D is very important to solar, what I think is most important is volume so that economies of scale can be taken advantage of and prices can come down. On the wind side, there are a lot of advancements that can take place, especially when it comes to low-speed technologies.

There’s another area that is very germane to both wind and solar and other technologies, especially technologies that are intermittent, and that’s storage. It’s the holy grail of intermittent renewable technologies.