Conference Hears Lessons Learned from Large Western Power Transmission Projects

SUGAR LAND--July 5, 2016--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Speakers at a conference on transmission development in the West last week shared so many anecdotes about the obstacles and delays they faced that one was tempted to revise slightly the lyrics to a Willie Nelson song, "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be transmission developers." On paper, these projects sounded sensible, but in practice, developers said they were being driven to distraction by the amount of time required to develop, permit and site their projects. No one was complaining about the time to construct their projects because none of the speakers had gotten to the construction phase of their projects yet. Within this article: Description of the SunZia and Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission projects.