CHEYENNE, Wyo.—LS Power announced Tuesday that it has purchased the rights to the Wyoming-Colorado Intertie Project, a proposed transmission line that would carry wind power from eastern Wyoming to Colorado’s front range.
The New Jersey-based company purchased rights to the project from AES Corp. for an undisclosed price, said Lawrence Willick, senior vice president of LS Power Development.
The project is a public-private development partnership that also includes the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority and the Western Area Power Administration.
The proposed 850-megawatt line would run about 180 miles between the Laramie River Station Substation at Wheatland to the Pawnee Substation at Brush, Colo. Developers hope to begin operating the line in 2013.
Willick said LS Power is in discussions and hopes to keep working with Trans-Elect Development Co., which has been conducting permitting and other development work for AES.
“Expansion into the transmission sector of the electric power industry is a major focus within LS Power due to the need to expand the transmission system in the U.S. to deliver renewable resources located in remote areas to load and to improve system reliability and efficiency,” said Paul Thessen, president of LS Power Development, in a news release.
Steve Ellenbecker, director of governmental and external relations for the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, said representatives of the authority met with LS Power on Monday to discuss moving the project forward.
“Wyoming has such an outstanding wind resource that can be developed economically, and as we see it, should be made available to consumers not only in Wyoming, but along the Colorado front range,” Ellenbecker said. “This project would enable (that) by breaking through the transmission bottleneck that is otherwise there.”
Willick said the project is working to sell 265 megawatts of transmission capacity that were not sold at auction last year. GreenHunter Wind Company of Texas and Duke Energy Ohio bought the remaining capacity.
Willick said the project’s Web site has fielded numerous inquiries from parties interested in buying space on the line.
“We still have the remaining capacity available for purchase at the project web site, and we haven’t made a decision yet if we would build it just with the existing purchasers,” he said.
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On the Net: Wyomng-Colorado Intertie,
