That's quite funny coming from a CA paper. Like we don't already have warnings of blackouts... ;-)
But yeah, the grid obviously has to be improved. I thought this was an interesting idea: Electrify the freight rail lines (much more efficient that diesel-electric), and since the rail lines will need power across the country, build a modern grid along their rights of way. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301
Electric is significantly more efficient than diesel-electric only when the diesel-electric has to do a lot of braking. (Electrics have regenerative braking, so stopping one train can be used to power another.) That means either lots of stops or hills; a train going down can power a train going up.
While trains spend a lot of money on fuel, it isn't a big fraction of their costs, so even free fuel can't make a huge difference in total train costs.
Moreover, electrification is very expensive. It's so expensive that electrification plan for the CalTrain corridor (San Jose to San Francisco), which is pretty much a best-case for electrification due to the frequent stops, doesn't mention cost-savings as a reason. They'll probably never recover the capital costs.
Electrification might pay for itself over the Rockies, but it's a loss throughout much of the US.
Since fuel-savings is pure profit, the freight-train companies are very motivated and constantly look at these things.
I think we could / should electrify the interstate highway system. That way hybrids and all electric cars can increase their range and reduce fuel usage.
This isn't FUD as another commenter suggested. There are significant issues with transmission management when you start adding significant percentages of renewables into your electricity mix.
The folks that manage real-time demand (i.e. ERCOT, SPP, MISO, IESO etc) haven't yet figured out how to deal with the huge transmission swings that come from large-scale wind generation. They're used to much smaller problems, like a transmission line going down, or a generation facility going offline unexpectedly. The idea of a ~30% swing in generation within a matter of minutes is new.
As for problems with the transmission infrastructure, there are two big issues. First, infrastructure doesn't exist where it's needed when it comes to renewables (you don't do capital investment in the middle of nowhere for no reason). Secondly, there's going to be a huge workforce crunch in the next 10-15 years in this sector - electricity isn't a 'sexy' industry these days, and a large (50%?) percentage of the workforce will be at retirement age in the next decade or two.
A smaller transmission issue is related to the rules currently in place for approving build outs - one representative of a regional transmission operator claimed they had over 1000 years of backlog in their transmission request queue if the existing rules were fully applied.
My 'day' job involves working with a variety of companies that are in the electricity sector, both wholesale and residential. This specific problem was the subject of a talk at a trade conference I was at a few months ago, lots of concern in the room.
I didn't think it was FUD, but the article did confuse me so maybe it was just poorly written (or I suck). Here's what I read:
Title: Warming of blackouts if wind, sun added to grid [note: I think this was supposed to be "warning"]
Opener: Adding electricity from the wind and the sun could increase the frequency of blackouts and reduce the reliability of the nation's electrical grid, an industry report says.
Body: The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says in a report scheduled for release today that unless appropriate measures are taken to improve transmission of electricity, rules reducing carbon dioxide emissions by utilities could impair the reliability of the power grid.
They went from warning about alternatives to discussing issues with emission reduction rules. Those two weren't connected in the article, so maybe I'm just not up on SF legislation. Am I to understand that the emission reduction rules mandate the use of some solar and wind and that the result of that could impair reliability because of the swings you mentioned (not mentioned in the article)? Help :-)
Yes, lots of jurisdictions are implementing "percentage by year" legislation that mandates (for instance) 20% renewables by 2020. The industry is trying to understand what all the impacts of this are, and there's a negative impact on reliability when you have a large percentage of unreliable (i.e. you can't guarantee it's sunny or windy) supply in your mix.
It's FUD because it assumes wind / solar will be added to the grid in an stupid fashion so that we increase the number of blackouts. But, wind power provided 19.7 percent of the Denmark's electricity in 2007 so clearly it's a reasonably well understood problem.
Edit: When you assume people will do X without doing Y which will cause an obvious problem your making an assumption that people will do something stupid. In this case X is increase usage of wind power and Y is upgrade the power grid and add energy storage. So when you say something bad is going to happen with this logic what your really saying is If people do something stupid bad things will happen which is not the same as saying X is bad.
But yeah, the grid obviously has to be improved. I thought this was an interesting idea: Electrify the freight rail lines (much more efficient that diesel-electric), and since the rail lines will need power across the country, build a modern grid along their rights of way. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301