Madison power struggle

Earlier this week American Transmission Company (ATC) announced three proposed routes for a new high-voltage power line in Dane County. You can find a map of the three proposed routes here. Reaction has been swift and all three routes have proponents and detractors. Big company, not-in-my-backyard that I built in a corn field away from the current power grid, politicians, well-informed electorate, environmentalists, small towns vs big city - this has all the makings of an epic battle.

It seems believable that Dane County needs a power upgrade. We have had an explosion of growth of Dane County in the last ten years and most of it, unfortunately, has been in corn fields on the edge of Madison or outside the smaller communities. How could we not need more power lines?

But two articles in the Isthmus illustrate that ATC deserves the bad reputation for how they treat potential customers that they earned with the Wausau-Duluth power line struggle.

An article this week in the Isthmus details a tour of ATC's facility near Cottage Grove that reporter Adam Hinterthuer went through. The employees of ATC were condescending at best with comments like:

"Here in my home, the People's Republic of Madison, surrounded by reality, we're having a big debate over the system needs," he says.

Now I know everyone does not like Madison, but if you are currently trying to win over Madison and bring them to your side of the debate, perhaps insulting them is not the best tactic. ATC also tried to make the need for electricity sound absolutely critical:

"I have to speak with a cautionary tone," she says. "Even though all of the... assessments of our reliability have deemed us ready for this summer, you never know what's going to happen."

Tornadoes can bring down power lines. User demand during hot summer months can overextend the system. A car can ram into a pole and knock out power.

One of the reporters present is skeptical. When was the last time something like this happened?

Mogensen mentions a time last spring in Wausau when power demand exceeded capacity. The Wisconsin Public Service had to issue appeals for citizens and businesses to take it easy on electricity.

"We didn't end up losing the area," Mogensen says, "but we were right on the edge." The three other ATC employees in the room chuckle and shake their heads knowingly. In fact, all of Mogensen's anecdotes involve worst-case scenarios that "almost" occurred.

The cow from the movie Twister could fly through the air and take out a pole too but I'd like to think that is not the basis for their presentation.

And it turns out ATC might be using some fuzzy math. According to an article published in the Isthmus a couple of weeks ago by David Shutes, ATC is exaggerating the data to show energy needs. Shutes worked for Alliant Energy for 23 years and he calls the report commissioned by ATC to show the need for more electricity unbalanced and incomplete.

Shutes points out in his analysis that ATC is using a 6.8% compound growth rate to project power needs. That means twice as many homes would have to be built in 2015 than in 2005, which seems highly unlikely. We've had strong growth here during the low interest rates, but double the growth we've seen seems totally unbelievable.

The ATC study also shows that the current power lines can meet all of the demand we will have for power until 2012 except for 29 peak hours. That's it? We should invest over $100 million and put high voltage lines over at least 35 but possibly as many as 55 miles of land for 29 hours of electricity needs? Surely there are some energy efficiencies we could implement to take care of 29 hours.

Obviously, ATC and government leaders do not want to be on the receiving end of complaints if the power grid can't keep up and we have outages so they are trying to plan ahead. But that plan should not include insulting the customers both with the words out of your mouth and the data you are trying to feed them.