Wisconsin bill signals openness to abundant, reliable power
Rep. David Steffen is one of the authors of a bill that would give utility regulators a year to pinpoint where in Wisconsin would be good places to put new nuclear power plants, and at first blush, you wonder why.
Didn’t the feds do a study on this? Yes, they did, last fall, pointing out that transmission lines and friendly neighbors already surround Wisconsin’s one operating nuclear power plant, Point Beach, and the closed-but-usable Kewaunee Power Station.
All good, but we’re going to need a lot more sites than that, said Steffen, a Republican from Howard.
Federal air rules already have led Wisconsin utilities to close large coal-fired plants that long formed the backbone of Wisconsin’s power supply. More closures seem baked in — even as plans blossom for what Steffen described as “tremendous increases in demand that we already have and more that will spike very quickly.”
“If we start taking options off the table,” he said, “we had better be prepared to put some others back on the table.”
So the bill would require the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to identify sites, both near existing power plants and elsewhere, that could host new plants. These include “small modular reactors,” the factory-made, theoretically cheaper and simpler units that are beginning to be installed in China and are close to use in America.
The bill would put a time limit, albeit extendable, on the PSC’s decision whether to issue the necessary “certificate of public need and convenience” that new power plants need. The PSC testified in favor of SB125, the version of the bill that passed the Senate, 28 to 5, in May. Now making its way through the Assembly as AB108, the measure cleared the Committee on Jobs and Economy on Wednesday, 8 to 2. The governor has signaled support for the concept.
Involving the state’s utility regulator in drawing up the map — instead of just giving it a veto later — should “accelerate the decision-making times,” Steffen said.
And more: “It is a big Bat-Signal in the sky for the nuclear industry,” he said.
Others might see the signal, too.
Predictions of rising Wisconsin power demand are driven by plans for data centers, the electricity-gulping organs of the online economy. States covet them for jobs and tax base.
Minnesota just lost a giant prospect when Amazon Web Services in late May killed its plan for a data center that would have cost “billions.” Exact reasons are hazy. There was a dispute about sales taxes, but it probably didn’t help when regulators said Amazon couldn’t install 250 backup generators at the site until it proved that it needed to keep its power on.
Wisconsin doesn’t require such power-plant style certificates for backup generators that don’t feed power to the public, so we’re a little ahead. Minnesota still has a ban on any new nuclear power plants — Wisconsin repealed its moratorium in 2016 — and that, too, makes a difference.
“In fairness, they are looking for reliable megawatts no matter the source right now,” said Isaac Orr, a founder at Always On Energy Research, a policy consultancy, about data centers. Natural gas would do the trick, he said, but nuclear plants are legendarily reliable, so if Wisconsin regulators show support, “I think it’ll probably help attract interest from data center companies.”
Reliability would help. We Energies boasted that its 1,500 acres of solar panels in Kenosha County, rated as being able to produce about 17 percent of what the Point Beach Nuclear Plant can, now includes giant batteries that can store up to four hours of power for when the sun isn’t shining. That’s helpful, though to be clear, federal data show that the solar panels in March produced not 17 percent of Point Beach’s output but 3.6 percent. And nights last longer than four hours.
Solar power — and wind, the other popular “renewable” source — have other issues. Both require enormous amounts of metal for vast arrays of blades and panels — by one recent Finnish government study, many times more metals than have been mined in recent decades.
All of which suggest we can’t build a future on solar and wind.
Energy policy is a set of collective decisions and consequences, sometimes involving a day without electricity, as Spain’s recent solar-powered disaster showed. Wisconsin already has gotten warnings: Utilities throughout the upper Midwest have closed so many reliable old coal plants that the regional grid operator warns about running short of electricity. Austerity impends.
Steffen suggests Wisconsin should opt for abundant energy instead. He amended the siting bill, estimated at a parsimonious $1 million, to ensure that nuclear fusion was examined, too. Several Wisconsin-based start-ups hope to have workable prototypes in a few years. Steffen is also hoping to get the state to sponsor a summit of advanced nuclear researchers and would-be manufacturers, again to show that Wisconsin would be a welcoming place.
All of it, if passed into law, would give a very real answer to the where-to-put-it question.
Answer: Wisconsin.
Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.
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