FERC Order No. 1000 Attempts to Ease Power Transmission Construction Issues

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Renewable energy developers--particularly those of remote solar and wind facilities--face a single problem that is perhaps the biggest hindrance to the development of these facilities: getting power from the plant site to the consumers. You can build windfarms in the middle of nowhere where the wind blows hardest; you can build solar farms in the middle of the desert where the sun shines most intensely. Unfortunately, these are the areas where no transmissions lines exist.

Constructing long-distance transmission lines is one of the most hotly debated energy issues today. Estimated costs of these lengthy lines to increase renewable energy delivery can run into tens of billions of dollars.

For every interstate and regional transmission line, two words stand out: cost allocation. Who is going to pay for what? What amounts will the different groups of consumers pay toward the cost of building and operating a new line?

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this summer issued FERC Order No. 1000, "Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation by Transmission Owning and Operating Public Utilities." The document is basically a guidebook to allocate costs for new transmission lines, improving the way transmission lines are planned and funded.

FERC wants transmission planners to consider all the parties that will benefit from the transmission lines, helping ensure that everyone who benefits from these lines will help pay for them. FERC Order No. 1000 attempts to make it easier to develop new transmission facilities and clarifies rules about who pays for what.

FERC Order No. 1000 is like an improved version of the Southwest Power Pool's "Highway/Byway" proposal, which was approved last year. The plan calls for costs to be allocated according to the voltage of the new lines. It assigns costs of high voltage transmission regionally and lower voltage lines locally.

As part of our North American Power Project Database, Industrial Info is currently tracking approximately 6,023 miles of interstate transmission line projects, worth approximately $15.2 billion, that is scheduled for construction before 2015.

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