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Released July 05, 2016 | SUGAR LAND
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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.
Indeed, some of the speakers came close to invoking William Shakespeare's classic line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
One speaker at the Fifth Annual TransForum West conference in Denver last week estimated the average time to develop a transmission project in the West was seven to 10 years. But other speakers said that estimate was optimistic. A more realistic estimate, they said, was 10-13 years, with some projects taking even longer than that. The event was sponsored by PennWell Corporation (Tulsa, Oklahoma).
SouthWestern Power Group II, LLC (Phoenix, Arizona), developers of the SunZia Transmission Project, has spent about 10 years developing that project. It will transmit up to 3,000 megawatts (MW) of windpower from New Mexico to the Phoenix, Arizona, area, where it will interconnect with existing lines that will carry the power to Southern California. David Getts, SouthWestern's general manager, predicted the project will begin construction in mid-2018, and be operating by 2020. "An eight-year federal permitting process wasn't bad," he told about 75 attendees at the conference. "I'm a transmission developer, so I'm optimistic. I guess I have to be," he added.
Development of the SunZia project was delayed because an anchor participant, windpower developer SunEdison, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few months ago. "That filing was a disaster for our project," Getts said. But other windpower developers are interested in affiliating with SunZia.
SunZia is one of several interstate transmission project that aim to bring renewable energy from New Mexico to California. Those projects make sense on paper because generation output in New Mexico peaks in the late afternoon and early evening, matching the load curve of Southern California utilities. By contrast, solar generation sited in Southern California tends to peak in the middle of the afternoon, several hours before it is needed locally.
These large transmission projects are more needed than ever given that California and Oregon recently increased their renewable portfolio standards (RPSs). California increased its RPS to 50% by 2030 while Oregon doubled its RPS, to 50% by 2040. For more on these state actions, see January 27, 2015, article - California Governor: 50% of Electricity from Renewables by 2030 and March 23, 2016, article - Oregon Bans Coal, Doubles its Renewables Mandate.
But because there is no regional reliability organization in the West, developers must work with both state and federal agencies to gain permits to site their projects. Transmission planning in most of the rest of the U.S. is done by a regional reliability organization like the PJM Interchange (Norristown, Pennsylvania), the Southwest Power Pool (Little Rock, Arkansas) or the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (Carmel, Indiana), which helps expedite transmission planning within their respective regions.
The SunZia project was one of several selected by the Obama administration's Rapid Response Transmission Team for expediting, but Getts remarked wryly, "What we got from that process was neither rapid nor responsive."
The biggest hurdle by far, Getts and another speaker agreed, has been the U.S. military, which has numerous bases in the West, and the different branches are very protective of those bases as well as the land surrounding them.
SouthWestern tangled with the U.S. Army for five years over SunZia's proposed route. Its proposed route took it too close to the White Sands Missile Base for the Army's taste. The base is located south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Eventually, the dispute reached the Secretary of Defense's office.
"The military is the 800-pound gorilla you don't want to fight," Getts told attendees at the TransForum West event. "I understand that missiles are fired at White Sands from Colorado and Utah, and the base's mission is to shoot them down," he added. "The military fights hard to protect what they do and their way of doing it."
Another conference speaker, Mitch Colburn, engineering leader for 500kV and joint projects at Idaho Power Company (Boise, Idaho), shared his story of negotiating with the U.S. Navy for years over a portion of the proposed route for the Boardman-to-Hemingway Transmission Project, a 300-mile, 500 kilovolt (kV) proposed transmission project that will cost between $1 billion and $1.2 billion to build.
"We're trying to build Boardman-to-Hemingway as an alternative to building carbon-emitting generation," Colburn said. Development of the project began in 2008, and Colburn thought a federal environmental impact statement (FEIS) might be completed by the end of 2016. "I am hopeful but not optimistic" about the timeline for completing the FEIS, he told conference attendees. He thought the line could be in service by 2022, or possibly later. "Again, I am hopeful but not optimistic."
Roughly 30% of that project will cross federal lands, Colburn said. Several speakers at the conference said developing transmission projects in the West was more challenging than in the East because the federal government and Native American tribes own or control such a high percentage of land in the West.
Permitting for the Boardman-to-Hemingway line also was complicated by a high level of turnover on the project-management team, Colburn acknowledged. The controversies over listing the Sage Grouse as an endangered species also slowed permitting for that transmission project. Colburn urged developers to bring several proposed routes to the federal permitting process. Idaho Power didn't, and that added further delays to the permitting process.
Asked how the transmission planning process in the West could be fixed, SouthWestern's Getts said, "Give FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] exclusive authority for all siting decisions for interstate lines. That's not going to happen unless a national crisis on a scale we don't want to talk about pushes Congress to grant FERC that authority. The process is broken today because everyone fights with everyone, and none of us share the same priorities and values."
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn. For more information on our coverage, send inquiries to info@industrialinfo.com or visit us online at http://www.industrialinfo.com/.
Indeed, some of the speakers came close to invoking William Shakespeare's classic line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
One speaker at the Fifth Annual TransForum West conference in Denver last week estimated the average time to develop a transmission project in the West was seven to 10 years. But other speakers said that estimate was optimistic. A more realistic estimate, they said, was 10-13 years, with some projects taking even longer than that. The event was sponsored by PennWell Corporation (Tulsa, Oklahoma).
SouthWestern Power Group II, LLC (Phoenix, Arizona), developers of the SunZia Transmission Project, has spent about 10 years developing that project. It will transmit up to 3,000 megawatts (MW) of windpower from New Mexico to the Phoenix, Arizona, area, where it will interconnect with existing lines that will carry the power to Southern California. David Getts, SouthWestern's general manager, predicted the project will begin construction in mid-2018, and be operating by 2020. "An eight-year federal permitting process wasn't bad," he told about 75 attendees at the conference. "I'm a transmission developer, so I'm optimistic. I guess I have to be," he added.
Development of the SunZia project was delayed because an anchor participant, windpower developer SunEdison, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few months ago. "That filing was a disaster for our project," Getts said. But other windpower developers are interested in affiliating with SunZia.
SunZia is one of several interstate transmission project that aim to bring renewable energy from New Mexico to California. Those projects make sense on paper because generation output in New Mexico peaks in the late afternoon and early evening, matching the load curve of Southern California utilities. By contrast, solar generation sited in Southern California tends to peak in the middle of the afternoon, several hours before it is needed locally.
These large transmission projects are more needed than ever given that California and Oregon recently increased their renewable portfolio standards (RPSs). California increased its RPS to 50% by 2030 while Oregon doubled its RPS, to 50% by 2040. For more on these state actions, see January 27, 2015, article - California Governor: 50% of Electricity from Renewables by 2030 and March 23, 2016, article - Oregon Bans Coal, Doubles its Renewables Mandate.
But because there is no regional reliability organization in the West, developers must work with both state and federal agencies to gain permits to site their projects. Transmission planning in most of the rest of the U.S. is done by a regional reliability organization like the PJM Interchange (Norristown, Pennsylvania), the Southwest Power Pool (Little Rock, Arkansas) or the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (Carmel, Indiana), which helps expedite transmission planning within their respective regions.
The SunZia project was one of several selected by the Obama administration's Rapid Response Transmission Team for expediting, but Getts remarked wryly, "What we got from that process was neither rapid nor responsive."
The biggest hurdle by far, Getts and another speaker agreed, has been the U.S. military, which has numerous bases in the West, and the different branches are very protective of those bases as well as the land surrounding them.
SouthWestern tangled with the U.S. Army for five years over SunZia's proposed route. Its proposed route took it too close to the White Sands Missile Base for the Army's taste. The base is located south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Eventually, the dispute reached the Secretary of Defense's office.
"The military is the 800-pound gorilla you don't want to fight," Getts told attendees at the TransForum West event. "I understand that missiles are fired at White Sands from Colorado and Utah, and the base's mission is to shoot them down," he added. "The military fights hard to protect what they do and their way of doing it."
Another conference speaker, Mitch Colburn, engineering leader for 500kV and joint projects at Idaho Power Company (Boise, Idaho), shared his story of negotiating with the U.S. Navy for years over a portion of the proposed route for the Boardman-to-Hemingway Transmission Project, a 300-mile, 500 kilovolt (kV) proposed transmission project that will cost between $1 billion and $1.2 billion to build.
"We're trying to build Boardman-to-Hemingway as an alternative to building carbon-emitting generation," Colburn said. Development of the project began in 2008, and Colburn thought a federal environmental impact statement (FEIS) might be completed by the end of 2016. "I am hopeful but not optimistic" about the timeline for completing the FEIS, he told conference attendees. He thought the line could be in service by 2022, or possibly later. "Again, I am hopeful but not optimistic."
Roughly 30% of that project will cross federal lands, Colburn said. Several speakers at the conference said developing transmission projects in the West was more challenging than in the East because the federal government and Native American tribes own or control such a high percentage of land in the West.
Permitting for the Boardman-to-Hemingway line also was complicated by a high level of turnover on the project-management team, Colburn acknowledged. The controversies over listing the Sage Grouse as an endangered species also slowed permitting for that transmission project. Colburn urged developers to bring several proposed routes to the federal permitting process. Idaho Power didn't, and that added further delays to the permitting process.
Asked how the transmission planning process in the West could be fixed, SouthWestern's Getts said, "Give FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] exclusive authority for all siting decisions for interstate lines. That's not going to happen unless a national crisis on a scale we don't want to talk about pushes Congress to grant FERC that authority. The process is broken today because everyone fights with everyone, and none of us share the same priorities and values."
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn. For more information on our coverage, send inquiries to info@industrialinfo.com or visit us online at http://www.industrialinfo.com/.
