Climate + Energy Project

Reprinted in full from Harris News – and, sorry about the blogstorm today. Too much information. After a holiday weekend, it happens.

Lawmakers concerned about potential transmission delays

By Chris Green

TOPEKA — Some key lawmakers are worried about how long it will take state regulators to decide which of two utilities should build high-voltage electric lines through southwest Kansas.

State utility regulators are charged with resolving what staff members say is an unprecedented competition between two companies which want to build the same transmission project.

ITC Great Plains and Prairie Wind Transmission, a Westar Energy venture, each want to construct a V-shaped series of lines running south from Spearville through Comanche and Barber counties and then north to Wichita.

Earlier this month, members of a board that oversees the expansion of the state’s transmission infrastructure expressed concern about the timeframe being discussed by the Kansas Corporation Commission.

The commission has yet to finalize its timeframe for deciding which utility builds the new transmission lines.

But the chairman of the Kansas Electric Transmission Authority, Rep. Carl Holmes, R-Liberal, said under a schedule being proposed by KCC staff, it could take 12 to 18 months for a decision to be made.

“We need to be building transmission today, not delaying for 18 months,” said Holmes, chairman of the House Energy and Utilities Committee.

Another transmission board member, state Sen. Janis Lee, D-Kensington, said she’s concerned a year-long delay could slow an expansion of wind power in Kansas even as other nearby states, such as Oklahoma and Nebraska, work to increase their production.

“We’re anxious for the development of wind energy in western Kansas,” Lee said.

Members of the commission’s staff have said there are number of questions that must be answered before it can decide which utility should build the project, including whether Westar’s partnership should be eligible to compete to build the lines.

State Sen. Jay Emler, R-Lindsborg, a member of the authority and chairman of the Senate Utilities Committee, said there doesn’t appear be any requirement that the KCC resolve this sort of case within a certain timeframe.

He said that in theory, lawmakers could pass a bill during the upcoming legislative session that would limit the time state utility regulators could spend in deciding whether a utility should build transmission lines.

While the situation will likely be discussed, he said he was skeptical that such a law would apply to a case already unfolding or that it would do much to speed the process.

In the meantime, Emler said the transmission authority plans to encourage the two utilities to work out some of compromise to decide who builds the lines.

“We as KETA can also certainly encourage the parties to step outside of a litigious process and agree on the best way to build this infrastructure,” Emler said.

Utilizing wind energy?

The project in question is part of a larger effort to upgrade the region’s transmission capacity and state energy experts consider the V-plan lines a key cog for expanding energy production in southwest Kansas, including wind power.

Holmes said the new lines would be particularly important should the incoming U.S. Congress pass a national mandate requiring utilities to generate a certain amount of their power from renewable sources.

Renewable energy advocates have said such a move could spur national demand for wind power from Kansas. But that’s provided the state, which has the nation’s third-greatest wind resource, has increased transmission capacity to carry that electricity outside central and western Kansas.

Yet under the KCC’s proposed schedule, though, Holmes said it could be 2012 or even 2014 before new transmission lines would be constructed, a delay that could be costly to the state in the event a national renewable portfolio standard becomes law by 2010.

“If that happens, which I think it will, and we don’t get transmission lines built until 2014, we’ve got wind energy resources in Kansas that cannot be utilized,” Holmes said.

ITC Great Plains, a transmission-only utility and the subsidiary of a Michigan company, was the first company to seek state-level approval to build the project.

It reached a deal earlier this year with the six rural electric cooperatives that form Sunflower Electric Power Corp. and Mid-Kansas Electric Co.

The central and western Kansas power providers agreed to let ITC Great Plains build two of the V-plan’s three sections inside their service areas, rather than build the lines themselves. They also offered the plan’s third-section, which crosses into Westar’s territory, to the investor-owned utility based in Topeka.

But Westar is seeking the dismissal of ITC Great Plains’ plan and has joined forces with two of the nation’s largest electric generation and transmission companies in proposing their own, similar project.