Selasa, 07 April 2015

wind powered gas line

There was a funny moment today in the Capitol when a VP from Canadian pipeline builder TransCanada updated lawmakers on his companys proposed $26 billion natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to Alberta. Trying to demonstrate the small footprint of the pipelines compressor stations, which pump gas down the line, the VP, Tony Palmer, compared the facilities to wind turbines -- a whole station would cover an area smaller than the spread between two turbines, he said, and the tallest building would be only one sixth as tall as a wind turbine. It seemed like an odd comparison. Palmer actually said something like, "So if youre familiar with wind turbines, . . ." which I imagine most Alaska lawmakers are not.
Once on the subject, Palmer took the opportunity to mention that TransCanada is building Canadas largest wind farm -- totaling 740 megawatts, or several hundred utility-scale turbines. also seemed like an odd thing to note. Did Palmer think oil-state legislators would be impressed by the green-power project? Lawmakers did include a softly worded requirement in recent pipeline legislation requiring companies to say how they would handle future carbon regulation, but environmental concern is rare here.
Palmer went on with his presentation, and a little later, one of the committee members, Bryce Edgmon, returned to the turbines. Is TransCanada planning to put turbines in Alaska? he asked.
really was an odd question. Lawmakers have studied this project for many months, and its hard to imagine that something like using wind turbines to power a giant natural gas pipeline would simply slip past unnoticed.
But Palmers response suggested the idea wasnt completely off base. TransCanada is planning to use natural gas to power the compressor stations, he said, but the company has used electricity on other pipelines, and has built power plants (burning natural gas) at some compressor stations.
"Will those be things that we look at?" Palmer asked himself. "Clearly they will be."
So maybe Edgmon is onto something.
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