Friday Morning Welcome

Mr. Richard Walje extended a genuine and enthusiastic welcome to Salt Lake City (SLC). He began his career as a journeyman and then chose to obtain an engineering degree. He worked for GE many years then returned home to Utah to work for Utah power and light and is now the President of Rocky Mountain Power. Before getting down to business he offered many SLC history tidbits on their electric power infrastructure. Mr. Walje provided data that coal fire energy makes up 50% of the power generation in the country and if changes are made at the pace they are going, by 2030 coal will reach 55%. Natural gas, nuclear, hydropower, geothermal and all renewables combined make up the other 50%. Renewable energy resources have high variability and there is not a standard method for integrated them with the power grid right now, which makes it difficult to adopt those energy generation resources easily. Natural gas, nuclear and geothermal can integrate easily and provide 24/7 operation, which makes them attractive to the power industry; however, government policy and environmental issues are making it difficult to choose which direction the power industry should take.


Recent improvements in coal processing have the capture and sequestration technologies are not stable at the power plant scale. Other technologies are on the rise, but they are not shown to reduce carbon emissions by 30%, but proven and cannot be adopted right away. Mr. Walje leaves us feeling like other power generation resources are challenged. That feeling is relieved when he starts discussing wind power. As of 2008, over 1000 MW of power is generated by wind turbines alone in the Rocky Mountain area and they set a goal of 2000 MW by 2013. The numbers show that on average, wind provides 31-36% of the needed capacity. He stressed that wind blows the most in the evening and during the winter, and the generation varies across broad geographies. The wind turbine systems are nothing short of sophisticated and are highly valued in this area. To encourage the adoption of renewables Mr. Walje proposes a cap-and-tax system. If the power company is not capturing carbon emission, they should be penalized. He supports the cap-and-trade system, but feels that there is nothing to trade, because stable technologies do not exist to capture. Furthermore, cap-and-trade is just a way to hide the real costs of climate change and is very similar to credit default swaps.

Mr. Walje then when on to present a high voltage transmission expansion of 2000 miles of ne wline to be completed by 2014, which will bring generation resources to load centers at the cost of $6 billion. He feels it is important to the future of te power industry to upgrade the infrastructure. He envisions a smart power grid that will contain self-healing adaptive controls, pricing signals, load controls, distribution generation control, compatibility with plug-in hybrid vehicles, IT technology to improve reliability and integration of multiple resource profiles into the grid. All of these lead to increased efficiency. Looking toward the future he believes the expertise of IEEE memebers will mean all the difference in the country's energy future and that there will be many career and professional power engineering opportunities.

Although he feels the power industry is constrained by the balance of economic development, protecting the environment, and reliable 24/7 energy, he leaves us with a realistic statement, "We will do our best, but it will be a challenge for us all."