Perspectives on an NWCC/NREL Assessment of Distributed Wind

During 1998 and 1999, the National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC) conducted an assessment of distributed wind power. The project team was led by Princeton Economic Research, Inc., now known as Princeton Energy Resources International (PERI). Financial support was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the wind energy program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Project oversight and review were provided by NWCC's Distributed Working Group. The overall objective for the NWCC assessment was to enhance understanding of business, policy, and technical issues associated with the deployment of wind-electric generating systems in the distributed-generation mode. In general, that mode is defined by placement ofthe generation close to customers-in contrast to large, distant central stations-and by electrical interconnection to the local distribution system-in contrast to higher voltage electrical transmission systems. As a follow-up to the assessment, NWCC intends to prepare a consensus-based issue brief that summarizes its findings and highlights the major results and conclusions for each stakeholdersector. This brief will also identify key action steps that could be undertaken by each stakeholder sector to facilitate the growth of distributed wind. The aim of this paper is to provide input to the NWCC for its consideration in developing the issue brief. Accordingly, this paper is in no way an NWCC consensus document. However, we the authors hope to assist in the issue-brief preparationprocess by providing a starting point for NWCC's consideration. One of the authors, Joseph Cohen, led the team that performed the NWCC assessment. The other two were involved in management of the assessment effort on behalf of the contracting organizations and are active members of the NWCC. We feel the perspectives offered in this paper are well-grounded in the findings of the assessmentresearch and can help in moving the consensus process forward.