The need for new transmission lines to connect renewable resources to load centers could spur a “transmission renaissance” in the West, speakers said Thursday during the American Clean Power Association’s 2021 conference.

“As many of you know, a great deal of the Western transmission grid was constructed 40 or 50 years ago, well before the western United States became a leader in renewable energy technology,” ACP CEO Heather Zichal said. “Today, Western states are investing in new transmission construction in places like Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, California and Nevada.”

Renewable resources in remote areas need transmission to reach large cities and states with clean-energy mandates.

“We have private developers and utilities that are both spending a lot of time thinking about how to meet that challenge,” said panel moderator Johnny Casana, senior director of U.S. political and regulatory affairs with Pattern Energy. “We might be on the cusp of a Western transmission renaissance.”

Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, head of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, talked about CNEE’s Western Interconnect Regional Electricity Dialogue (WIRED) program, begun last year to offer policy recommendations to Western governors. Promoting regional transmission and resource planning is a primary goal.

“You have the California ISO, and you have the Southwest Power Pool, and in the middle, you have a variety of states and utilities that are not part of a transmission organization or ISO,” Ritter said. States have different climate goals and economic needs, making consensus difficult, he said.

WIRED held working group meetings last year and issued three reports in November on resource adequacy, transmission planning and greenhouse gas accounting. The reports address potential areas of mutual benefit among Western states.

“It wasn’t likely that they would come to common ground on all things clean energy and climate, but that there were avenues forward, pathways on [which we could] have discussion about more regional planning … particularly in a time where there is added emphasis and hopefully added funding for the buildout of infrastructure,” Ritter said.

CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said California is focused on readying transmission and distribution infrastructure to connect more than 10 GW of new clean energy resources in the next six years.

“The challenge of transmission in the West is certainly a planning challenge, but even more so it’s a commercial subscription and construction challenge,” Mainzer said. “There are multiple key transmission lines in advanced stages of development in the West. In many ways the map has been drawn, and under virtually all scenarios California will need to import … significant amounts of renewable energy from adjacent states to meet its clean energy goals.

“So, the key question for California and other load-serving entities and resource developers is which of these proposed paths make the most sense in terms of resource access and diversification while further strengthening the economic and environmental value of our interregional market,” he said.

Tx in the Works

Major transmission lines are in the planning or pre-construction stages in the West.

Michael Lamb, senior vice president for transmission at Xcel Energy, said the company filed an application with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission in March to build the Colorado Power Pathway, a $1.7 billion project to connect wind and solar arrays on the plains of Eastern Colorado to cities, including Denver, on the Rocky Mountain Front Range.

The proposal includes more than 600 miles of double-circuit 345 kV lines and four new substations, “bringing roughly 5.5 GW of new renewable energy to our customers in Colorado,” Lamb said. The project “contributes greatly to our corporate objectives” of reducing carbon emission 80% by 2030 and supplying customers with 100% clean energy by 2050.

Xcel was the first large investor-owned utility to make such a pledge. (See Xcel Pledges to Go 100% Carbon Free.)

Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns PacifiCorp and NV Energy, which together supply energy to areas of Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and California and all of Nevada.

The utilities see “transmission as a strong driver right now,” said Christina Hayes, BHE’s vice president for federal regulatory affairs. “It feels like this is a sudden moment that has been in the making for about 15 years.”

The company is pursuing 1,300 miles of high-voltage transmission projects in Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, Hayes said.  “They’re considered local projects, but it’s hard to see how 1,300 miles is local,” she said. “It’s not exactly a small area.”

The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada approved the first phase of NV Energy’s Greenlink Nevada project in March. It consists of a 525 kV line from Las Vegas to the northern part of the state. Planning for a subsequent phase is underway. (See Regulators Greenlight NV Energy’s Greenlink West.)

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a sweeping energy bill earlier this month, Senate Bill 448, that contains provisions meant to accelerate construction of the Greenlink project, which would connect solar and geothermal resources to cities in an immense triangle of high-voltage lines. (See Far-reaching Energy Bill Sweeps Through Nev. Legislature.)

“These projects are designed to integrate hundreds of megawatts of renewables that are needed to come on to the system to support decarbonizing the system in a way that is cost-effective for customers and reliable for all involved,” Hayes said.

Resource sufficiency is a key goal after a prolonged Western heat wave caused rolling blackouts in California last August and threatened Nevada, too.

“Next week we’re expecting 115-degree weather in Las Vegas, and so I’m afraid our system is going to be tested again,” Hayes said. “This amount of [new] transmission is needed to provide resources on the system to ensure that we are all able to keep the lights on.”

The long-planned TransWest Express project is getting closer to construction, said Roxanne Perruso, senior vice president and chief operating officer of private developer TransWest Express LLC. The $3 billion project will connect wind farms in Wyoming to Las Vegas, Phoenix and Southern California.

“We’re going to be able to connect some of the best wind resources in Wyoming with some of the biggest load centers in the West,” she said.

“We’ve secured all the major federal, state and county permits and authorizations. We have acquired over 95% of the 732-mile right of way [across Wyoming, Utah and Nevada] and we have 99% of the private land easements,” she said. “We’re completing the transmission interconnection studies and, finally, just this week … we launched our first open solicitation process to allocate capacity on TransWest Express.”

“We’re putting everything in place to start construction next year, and I can’t wait to get out of what I’m going to call the paper phase and get into putting steel in the ground,” she said.

The line is expected to go live in 2025.