经济学人下载:风能发电遇到困难

Renewable energy in the north-west
美国西北部的可再生能源

Tilting at windmills
风能发电遇到困难

Teething troubles in the clean-energy sector
清洁能源领域中的问题开始出现

Jun 16th 2011 | SEATTLE | from the print edition

THE melting snows of spring and early summer are justly celebrated by Aaron Copland and Walt Whitman. But they are causing a lot of trouble in the Pacific north-west, as a federal power agency pushes private wind turbines off the grid in what critics call a case of favouritism towards electricity generated by federal dams.

春季夏初,冬雪融化,这正是阿隆.柯普兰的音乐和威廉.惠特曼的诗歌中所赞美的时节。但现在融化的冬雪却给太平洋西北岸地区带来了麻烦。因为一家联邦电力机构把私有企业风机发电所产生的热能并出电网，而此举被批评人士看成对联邦水电站的一次政策性偏移。

The region’s wind power companies are enraged and are petitioning the regulators. Encouraged by politicians and their subsidies, they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past six years on a 14-fold increase in generating capacity.But this year, as an unusually large snowmelt surges into the rivers of Oregon and Washington, the wind lobby is howling about government perfidy. “You can’t trust the guy who is running the grid,” says Robert Kahn, executive director of the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition.

这一下激怒了当地的风力发电公司，他们正在向政策制定者请愿。这些公司在政客鼓动和政府津贴的诱惑下，在过去的6年间投入了数以百万美元，电力产能因此翻了14倍。但在今年，随着罕见的冬雪大量融化，涌入俄勒岗州和华盛顿州的河水流域中，风能发电的游说者对政府的出尔反尔大诉苦水。西北及内陆电力联盟的执行经理，罗伯特.卡恩就抱怨道：“你没法相信管理供电网络的人。”

The guy in question is the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a venerable federal bureaucracy that markets power from 31 federal dams in the Columbia river basin. Thanks to monstrous chunks of concrete like Grand Coulee Dam, completed 70 years ago and still the largest hydroelectric facility in North America, the north-west gets more of its power from hydro than any other region of the United States.

卡恩所指的是邦纳维尔电力局，它是一所受人尊敬的联邦机构，管理着哥伦比亚河域盆地31座联邦水坝所发出电力的市场销售。70年前建造的大古力水坝，凭借其庞大坚固的建筑结构，至今仍为北美洲最大的水力发电站。而美国西北部水力发电供电量要比美国其它地区都多。