CHEYENNE — Developers will take bids from power generators, distributors and others for space on a proposed power line to transmit electricity from eastern Wyoming to the Colorado Front Range.
Developers of the “Wyoming-Colorado Intertie” project will hold an open-season auction in June, hoping to collect commitments for up to 900 megawatts of transmission.
Wyoming wind-generated power is expected to make up a significant portion of the power committed to the line, according to officials.
Xcel Energy worked with the companies behind the project to coordinate the timing of their auction with its plan to issue a request for proposals for 650 megawatts later this year, said Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz.
“But this is no guarantee at this time that WCI will serve successful bidders into Xcel Energy’s wind-expansion efforts,” Stutz said.
If the June auction is successful, the line could be built and put into operation by mid-2013.
The project is the culmination of a public/private partnership among the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, the Western Area Power Administration and independent transmission company Trans- Elect.
For years, industry officials identified the power transmission between Wyoming and Colorado as a serious bottleneck in the electrical grid that easily justified an expansion. But pairing up electrical generation on one end of the line with distributors and customers on the other end requires a lot of coordination.
“You have to have the generation and transmission, and you have to have the economics in place as well,” said Randy Wilkerson, spokesman for the Western Area Power Administration. Post staff and news services
