By Tom Kleckner

The dream of transporting wind energy east from the Great Plains took a major step toward reality Friday with the U.S. Department of Energy’s approval of Clean Line Energy Partners’ Plains & Eastern project.

The Energy Department issued a record of decision, saying it would “participate in the development” of the 700-mile, HVDC transmission project and designated a preferred route through Oklahoma and Arkansas. The decision caps nearly six years of study and evaluation by the department.

Clean Line says the $2.5 billion, privately funded project will deliver 4,000 MW of wind power — enough to power more than 1 million homes — from the Oklahoma Panhandle through Arkansas to the Mississippi River. The Plains & Eastern line would interconnect with the Tennessee Valley Authority near Memphis after first dropping off 500 MW at a converter station in central Arkansas.

DOE: Need for Transmission

The Energy Department said development of the panhandle’s “consistent and lowest-cost [wind resources] in the nation” has been constrained by a lack of “cost-effective transmission capacity to major load centers.”

“The project would, therefore, unlock the potential for significant new development of wind energy and deliver that energy to a region of the United States that has seen relatively scarce wind development,” the department said. “By increasing the availability of renewable energy from the Panhandle region across a wide geographic area, the project will facilitate market competition that will ultimately benefit consumers and the renewable energy industry as a whole.”

Clean Line President Michael Skelly welcomed DOE’s participation. “The Department of Energy’s decision shows that great things are happening in America today,” he said, calling Plains & Eastern the “largest clean-energy infrastructure project in the nation.”

DOE RFP

Clean Line proposed the project in response to the Energy Department’s 2010 request for proposals for transmission projects under Section 1222 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which authorizes the department to participate in “designing, developing, constructing, operating, maintaining or owning” new transmission.

With major regulatory approvals in hand, Clean Line says construction can begin in 2017.

The department’s involvement could help Clean Line in acquiring the right of way for the line, although it said the company will need to demonstrate the commercial viability of the project by executing “significant” firm transmission service agreements before obtaining land through eminent domain. It will also need to complete technical studies required by SPP, MISO and TVA.

Clean Line says the project “will support thousands of jobs in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee, including hundreds of manufacturing jobs.” Clean Line has a $300 million contract with Pelco Structural, of Oklahoma, to build the project’s tubular steel transmission towers and has selected three Arkansas companies to build related infrastructure such as transmission conductors and glass insulators.

The American Wind Energy Association said the project will “create the opportunity” for $7 billion in new wind farm development. “The project supports economic opportunity, often in rural areas that need it most, and potential energy bill savings for Americans,” said AWEA CEO Tom Kiernan. “Over 99% of all installed utility-scale wind capacity is located in rural areas.”

Opposition to Project

As a condition for its approval, the department required Clean Line use environmental-protection measures during the development, construction and operation of the project “to minimize impacts to landowners and the environment.”

Still, the project has drawn opposition from landowners and political figures. (See DOE Issues Favorable EIS on Plains & Eastern Project and Plains & Eastern Tx Line Foes Cry Foul over DOE Review.)

The Arkansas congressional delegation issued a statement lamenting the Energy Department’s involvement. “Today marks a new page in an era of unprecedented executive overreach, as the Department of Energy seeks to usurp the will of Arkansans and form a partnership with a private company — the same private company previously denied rights to operate in our state by the Arkansas Public Service Commission,” the legislators said. “Despite years of pushback on the local level and continuous communications between our delegation and Secretary [Ernest] Moniz, DOE has decided to forgo the will of the Natural State and take over the historic ability of state-level transmission control through this announcement.”

Although Clean Line won public utility status in Oklahoma and Tennessee, its request was rejected by Arkansas. “They couldn’t find a way to regulate [an] interstate transmission provider,” Clean Line General Counsel Cary Kottler said in an interview. The department’s imprimatur allows the company to overcome that hurdle, he said.

The department will participate in the project through the Southwestern Power Administration, a federal agency that markets hydroelectric power from 24 dams in six states.

It will not make any financial contribution. Instead, Clean Line will pay any Energy Department costs in advance, as spelled out in a participation agreement that also obligates the developer to contribute 2% of its revenues to federal hydropower-infrastructure improvements.