Jan 25 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Jack Money The Oklahoman

Power officials expect Oklahoma will be a leading exporter of wind-generated energy by 2024.

Thursday, representatives of the Southwest Power Pool, one of eight regional transmission networks carrying power throughout the continental U.S., detailed its planned improvements and ongoing studies for improvements that will help move much of that power east to other parts of the country.

They made their presentation at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission's offices.

Wind soon could be Oklahoma's most valuable export, Commissioners Jim Roth and Jeff Cloud said after the meeting.

Roth said Oklahoma has enough wind to generate tens of thousands of megawatts of power. As a way of describing how much that is, he noted Oklahomans only need 14,000 megawatts of power today.

"We are on the cusp of something that great," Roth said. "But there are reliability issues and standards that have to be met, and this is what the Southwest Power Pool and other regional networks have to do."

Roth said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission set "high hurdles" to make sure entrepreneurs can build the wind farms, get the power into the grid safely and reliably meet demand.

Jay Caspary, director of engineering for Southwest Power Pool, told participants at Thursday's meeting numerous utility companies, including Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and American Electric Power Co., already are willing to help build a new network of high-voltage transmission lines across parts of Oklahoma to carry the wind-generated power and tie it into the bigger network.

"I am just impressed that we have this commitment to build out the grid," said Caspary.

More study is needed, though, he added.

"We need to refine, and revise our collector system, as appropriate ... figure out where the hubs are, where the spokes are, how big do we build it, and how soon. That all will be driven by assumptions in our studies."

The issue also is being examined by a state-level task force created by the 2007 Legislature.

Commissioner Cloud, chairman of the task force, said the group already has submitted a preliminary report and continues its work today.

Members of the taskforce include legislators and electric utility representatives.