Welcome back to TV news. At 10 the power
you use in your home may have traveled
hundreds of miles through large power
lines that make up what
we call the power grid.
But the TV defenders found those
lines aren't enough to keep
our power grids safe and it'll
take years before we see a fix.
Here's investigative
reporter Erica Proffer.
You ready don't
call this rural life simple.
It's a big responsibility
for rancher Witt Jones.
Can sit around and talk
about it all day long,
so keep the land valuable to cattle.
It's a great industry.
Healthy his family
established the ranch in 1890,
but this land is more than an
income more than a family legacy.
Power companies covet it.
It's almost annually that we're
presented with either a potential
rail line or a new. Transmission line
Jones lives here near the Texas
Mexico border in Jim Hogg County,
it's usually sunny and windy.
A vast rural area.
I think we need to play catch up.
I think we need a big transmission build out.
Joshua Rhodes is a research associate
at the Weber Energy Group at the
University of Texas at Austin.
Because if you look at
what the power plants that are trying
to get built in the system right now,
it's a lot of wind and solar because that's
the cheapest thing there is to build.
And there's a high demand.
Texas needs it.
A deadly winter storm in February
2021 left millions without power.
Temperatures stayed in the single
digits for days hundreds died.
Investigators reveal power
plants and natural gas lines
weren't properly weatherized
and the state needs more power,
more places to build when
more places to build solar,
but because that resource is
located far away from where
we want to consume energy.
Dallas, Austin, San Antonio,
Houston, we have to move it, Rhodes
says out here. The sun shines brighter,
the wind blows more often clean
energy needs these ingredients.
We need a way to get that energy to cities.
That's where that electricity is generated.
It's converted into high voltage,
alternating current that's put on
these basically large long metal ropes
that are held up by these big poles.
And then it's moved all the
way from out there to here.
Those poles and ropes are
called transmission lines.
It carries the wind and solar
energy to a substation.
There electricity is transformed.
Into a lower voltage so it can get
to your home so more people and more
homes mean more demand for electricity.
More demand for big transmission lines.
Researchers at Princeton University
mapped out where we need transmission
lines for wind and solar alone.
Their report shows we would
need to at least double what we
have in the next eight years.
Right now, construction in Texas
total is less than 1% of that.
We're looking at a B&C right.
Projects take years.
We want to promote grid reliability.
If anything,
the February storms taught us is
that we do need to fix things fixing
hits people like wit differently.
Attorneys Patrick Resnick and Carly
Barton showed us how companies
must first map out possible lives.
Yeah, consider the environment.
This is segment with P impacted
homes and try to keep the cost down.
We need electricity
so this is an existing corridor
of transmission lines.
But no matter what power lines
pass through private property,
it puts owners on edge
to the land. How's it going to damage
it and how's it going to be devaluated?
The land can be taken by force once
the route is selected.
The transmission line it
does go into condemnation.
It's the only time the landowner is
ever gonna get compensated for this
easement that will never go away.
An easement gives the right
to use someone else's land.
Land owners still own the land pay taxes.
Companies can build whatever
they want as long as it meets
the terms of the easement.
So there is definitely room for compromise.
My name is Scott Roots,
so the public Utility Commission
of Texas balances the states need
company spending and landowner.
Concerns
I've been in the farming business
for almost 45 years from location.
It's very difficult to go around
these large lattice structures.
My support 16 mile two was material
condition on the use of monopole structures.
Commissioners must consider. Cost
is the number that jumps out
at me is 42% cost increase
because everyone who has a
utility bill splits the price for
transmission lines and maintenance.
It may be labeled regulatory charge
or delivery charge and it's not part
of the electricity. Rate and yeah,
it went up after the winter storm.
I recognize the importance of them.
It's just upsetting though.
You don't get much choice in whether
you want any part of them or not.
Wit knows the fight first hand,
transmission lines were set to
cut down the center of his ranch.
He would lose business.
Basically consume me for about two years
went and his attorneys found other land
owners who wanted to sell easements,
pitched a new route. Saved money
the transmission line in itself
isn't such an issue with one.
For now, the issue has to do with
what follows the transmission line,
and in today's world most
likely that's wind farms.
Big wind turbines line the
landscape in South Texas.
They generate the energy we need.
It's kind of an ethical conundrum
because when you put these things up,
you're also affecting your neighbor. That's
not all. To complicate matters even more,
law enforcement told US transmission lines
leading north from the Texas Mexico border.
Service guides for smugglers.
They can be seen from a from a
distance and followed from a distance.
Anything that runs north
to South and South Texas
already. Roads near Whitts
home show signs of smuggling
ranchers put out water jugs.
We found clothes left behind.
It's certainly not something
that you want near your house.
There may be another way.
The Texas Power Grid manager
shows the state needs technology
beyond large transmission lines.
How solar panels, smart cars
and batteries can offer relief.
In demand peaks,
PUC must approve any new idea. We'll
be better off if we take a
technology agnostic approach.
If we just mandate a
certain level of reliability
back at the ranch which sells some
energy off his land, researchers have
geothermal energy projects underway.
He said he would welcome solar farms.
We appreciate green energy as much
as anybody else does, but it's gotta
work. Those projects could lead
to more transmission lines.
Our objective is not to shut it down.
Our objective.
Because let's just be very
thoughtful about how we do it.
These are our properties.
These are our homes.
This is our our our land.
In Austin for the Cavs
defenders, I'm Erica Proffer.