Transmission project to carry Wyoming wind gets federal clearance
The project time start to finish will be 19 years. Clearly, time is not of the essence.
Transmission project to carry Wyoming wind gets federal clearance
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the US Department of the Interior on Tuesday said it has issued a notice to proceed with the construction of the TransWest Express project that will stretch from Wyoming to Nevada, adding 3 GW of transmission capacity.
The project will carry electricity generated by a huge onshore wind complex in Wyoming's Carbon County -- the over 3-GW Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind energy project, which similarly to the TransWest Express project is partially located on public lands managed by the BLM. The giant wind park is being delivered by Power Company of Wyoming LLC.
The notice to proceed is the final step of the BLM authorisation process which started in 2008 and the final federal authorisation required to start construction on the 732-mile (1,178 km) high-voltage system, TransWest Express LLC, a wholly owned affiliate of The Anschutz Corporation, said.
TransWest has secured 100% of the linear rights-of-way for the project, along with the required authorisations from the four states (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nevada) and 14 counties hosting the project. It pointed out that this will be the Western power grid’s largest transmission addition in decades.
The company plans to start construction activities by the end of the year, with the first stage expected to be completed in 2027.
“Achieving the BLM NTP [notice to proceed] milestone provides important certainty that is needed as we work to complete other pre-construction steps such as finalising our EPC [engineering, procurement and construction] contractor team,” said Bill Miller, president and chief executive of TransWest.
Exactly.
Well, now everyone understands why those of us that build stuff hate the process.