FEBRUARY - MARCH8IN MY OPINIONJim Helvig, P.E., Vice President of Operations at Dashiell Corporation, Madison Operations, has been in the utility and renewable energy industry for over 24 years. He holds a BSEE from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology and has 25 years of practical military and utility industry leadership experience. Before that, Jim worked in the construction and land development industry. He has held every engineering, project management, and leadership position, from Graduate Engineer to President, and has applied his previous experiences to effectively develop a culture that keeps the end in mind. The renewable industry has provided one of the most exciting, yet challenging, opportunities for our industry in the past few decades. In the early 2000s, the industry was primarily focused on incorporating wind turbines into our generation mix. The federal government incentivized the developers through non-renewing subsidies that spurred developers to move quickly to bring clean energy to the grid. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) was one of the premier advocates for anyone interested in the opportunities associated with the wind industry and attracted a mix of developers, high and medium-voltage contractors, equipment manufacturers, consulting engineers, utility engineers, landowners who were all looking for how they fit into the incredible transformation that was underway. Interest in the industry was far-reaching and a significant hurdle was developing the infrastructure to bring wind generation onto the grid and transfer it to load centers before incentives expired. We often referred to the industry back then as the "Wild West." As the market matured, contractors who had never participated in the construction of a substation were now hiring superintendents to help enter that market. Manufacturers were rushing to incorporate new technologies to meet the needs of the industry. The IEEE organization formed committees to determine best practices and establish standards to stabilize the technical design parameters, which flowed into construction. The excitement in the industry was the equivalent of a "moon shot" without the oversight of a NASA-type organization. While developers and suppliers were working through requirements to put projects together, utilities were working on grid interconnection agreements and congestion. Utilities that had built the electrical infrastructure through careful and deliberate planning, using well-tested and highly reliable systems and processes, were now facing moving intermittent wind energy from source to load while maintaining high reliability in a very fast-paced renewable industry. Moving wind energy from areas that had proficient wind resources and land to the load centers on the coasts THE EVOLUTION AND INTEGRATION OF RENEWABLE ENERGYBy Jim Helvig, P.E., Vice President of Operations, Dashiell CorporationJim Helvig
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