Preliminary calculations, assuming existing production tax credits for wind project participation in the project, could reduce costs by as much as $10M/year or $10 per megawatt hour compared to delivery of other wind projects from SPP to MISO.

“Mr. Trump talks about infrastructure, he talks about jobs,” said Michael Skelly, founder and president of Clean Line Energy Partners, a company based in Houston that builds transmission lines for renewable energy.

“What we’re creating are welding jobs, steel manufacturing jobs, in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa,” he said. “These are projects that create income for landowners, create jobs in the middle of the country.”

...scrap the $5 trillion dollar Obama-Clinton Climate Action Plan and the Clean Power Plan and prevent these unilateral plans from increasing monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable effect on Earth’s climate. ​

He will defend Americans' fundamental rights to free speech, religious liberty, keeping and bearing arms, and all other rights guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights and other constitutional provisions.  This includes the Tenth Amendment guarantee that many areas of governance are left to the people and the States, and are not the role of the federal government to fulfill.

"Election Day was a big sea change in America," Jimmy Glotfelty, executive vice president for Clean Line Energy Partners, told the TVA board last week. "But we believe that just because we've gone from Democrats to Republicans (in the White House) that does not change the need for jobs and low-cost energy in America and we believe we will provide that. We've been before this board for the past seven years and our project dynamics have not changed."

If you’ve never heard of the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership before, join the club. It has the potential to influence rapid change in the global energy sector...

The exclusive organization (by invitation only) characterizes itself as “an entity with a unique operational knowledge of the electricity sector:”

Among the group’s four main recommendations is this one:

"Make urgent progress with innovative research, development and demonstrations of advances economically viable technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the efficient generation, delivery and end ‐ use of electricity."

That goal dovetails neatly with U.S. Department of Energy initiatives under the Obama Administration. Many of these are already under way and are virtually irreversible. In some states they enjoy strong support from Republican policymakers. One good example is the 720-mile Plains & Eastern transmission line. It will deploy GE transformer stations for the economical delivery of 4,000 megawatts of wind power, sourced from wind farms located in the “red” state of Oklahoma.

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
Isoroku Yamamoto

Converter stations function as on- and off-ramps; generators connect to the on-ramp and load- serving entities receive low-cost wind power at off- ramps

Clean Line will sell transmission service to shippers via long term transmission contracts - Those who use the line, pay for it

Clean Line Energy has lined up firm commitments for about 100 MW thus far, but it has term sheets for more than 3,500 MW that outline key terms for negotiating with customers following DOE’s decision, Kottler told TransmissionHub.

Although the project has a couple agreements with utilities to take wind power through the transmission line if it is built, many utilities and interested companies have been waiting for DOE’s ruling before making such commitments, Michael Skelly, president of Clean Line Energy said during the March 25 conference call.

“We’re seeing vast and strong indications of interest” and Clean Line Energy will firm up commercial support for the project in the coming days and weeks, with the DOE decision an essential part of moving those discussions along, Kottler said.

Many parties in the Southeast have been waiting for DOE’s decision to reach a deal with wind project developers, Skelly said during the conference call. During a 2014 solicitation, more than 15,000 MW of wind projects expressed an interest in using the Plains & Eastern project to move energy to markets in the South and Southeast, he said.

Plains & Eastern can transport market power when the wind is not blowing
Average line utilization from wind power will be around 60%
Remaining capacity available for SPP market power delivery to MISO or PJM
Possible use of unused capacity:
• Solar
• Arbitrage opportunities

the simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency, or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset.

Arbitrage opportunities exist between RTOs that are connected through P&E even when including additional transmission service

Utilizing unused capacity to take advantage of these arbitrage opportunities create additional value to the owner of the transmission capacity

Market power arbitrage could yield up to $60 million a year, assuming perfect execution on unused capacity up to 1000 MW of OK-TN service and 500 MW of OK-AR service over the entire project

Positive market power price differentials are valuable when delivering SPP power to PJM or MISO, whichever is higher priced, including non-firm transmission costs and losses, and negative differentials are valuable when delivering PJM or MISO power, whichever is lower priced, to SPP including non-firm transmission costs and losses

8.27 Renewable Energy Transmission. At any time during which any Transmission Services Agreements are in effect, the Clean Line Entities shall use all commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that at least 75% of the total Electrical Capacity covered by all Transmission Services Agreement that are then in effect to be covered by Transmission Services Agreements used for the transmission of renewable energy resources; provided that, to the extent the transmission of energy from non-renewable resources is required by Applicable Law (including pursuant to any open access tariff rules), such events would not render the underlying Transmission Services Agreement from being disqualified toward the 75% threshold.

This will be GE’s first HVDC project in the United States since acquiring Alstom’s energy portfolio last year. This addition to our portfolio was critical.

If the Companies determine in any annual PJM Base Residual Auction (“BRA”) that their combined capacity obligations for the delivery year covered by the BRA (“Delivery Year”) exceed the Companies’ owned or contracted-for capacity resources for the Delivery Year by 100 MW or more (“Capacity Shortfall”), then not later than the end of the calendar year following the BRA, the Companies will develop an RFP for capacity resources to address the Capacity Shortfall and submit the RFP to the Commission and the Parties for their review and comment. The RFP will allow proposals from both supply-side and demand-side resources.

Mon Power’s Long Term Load Forecast indicates a capacity shortfall starting in 2016, with the shortfall exceeding 700 MW by 2020 and extending to over 850 MW by 2027.

We will continue to seek opportunities both within the competitive realm and the states to further de-risk the business and convert megawatts from competitive markets to a regulated or regulated-like construct.

We also plan to work with the West Virginia Public Service Commission when they are ready to address the generation shortfall included in Mon Power's integrated resource plan.

So we previously filed the IRP. It showed a need for generation going out a couple of years from now. But that case right now is concluded. So there is nothing that would, unless we were to file something, initiate something, that would come out of that case. So we would be looking as we go forward and continue to monitor the forecast for that company to see how we might want to present something consistent with the IRP in terms of bringing additional generation to Mon Power.

Michael Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co.

Got it. So there's no formal like RFP process that's about to kick off or that will be undertaken in 2016 or 2017?

Leila L. Vespoli - Executive Vice President, Markets & Chief Legal Officer

Correct. There's no time line associated with that. We would initiate it when we believe it to be the appropriate time.

The decisive regulator makes decisions (1) required by the public interest, (2) when the public interest requires it, (3) regardless of discomfort felt, (4) using a logical method and an active approach.

At this time, however, we do not see any short-term solutions to the current challenging market situation. Longer-term, we do not believe competitive generation is a good fit for FirstEnergy and are focused regulated operations. And we cannot put investors and our company at risk as we wait for the country and PJM to address the issues with the current construct.

The wind farm is a construction story, involving three of Rhode Island’s major ports — in Providence, Quonset, Point Judith — and more than 300 blue- and white-collar workers.

Jen McCann, the director of United States coastal programs at University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center, says the northeast is “considered the Saudi Arabia for wind.” J. Timmons Roberts points to the fact that Rhode Island imports more than $3 billion a year in fossil fuels to meet its energy needs. “So that’s $3 billion pouring out of our economy to Pennsylvania for fracked natural gas, or to Texas or Saudi Arabia or Venezuela,” he says. “Think of how many jobs you can make for $3 billion,” he says. The United States Department of Energy is already doing some of those calculations. In a recent report, the DOE has predicted the United States will have 32,000 offshore wind-related jobs by 2020 and more than 170,000 by 2050.

A wind resource map, published by the U.S. Office of Renewable Energy, illustrates the windiest real estate in America. A vertical violet streak down the nation’s midsection indicates persistent, intense winds concentrated in places like western Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. And a private company, called Clean Line Energy Partners, plans to tap that for electricity it can immediately transport to utilities requiring a bolus of alternative energy in their portfolios.  

Clean Line Energy Partners, LLC — established in 2009 and headquartered in Houston —  has laid out five 600-kilovolt, direct current power transmission lines across the U.S. CLEP aims to bolster our aging national power transmission grid starting with The Plains & Eastern Clean Line that's designed to deliver 4,000 megawatts of wind energy from western Oklahoma to the Tennessee Valley Authority for distribution to southeastern markets.

...Narragansett officials resisted plans for the wind farm’s cable to run underneath its town beach. Deepwater Wind, the company building the wind farm, eventually got clearance to send the cord under Scarborough State Beach instead.

The Grain Belt Express Clean Line wind energy project has made significant steps towards getting the final green light from the Public Service Commission.

“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to build a line around Missouri,” Lawlor said, adding that he is confident the PSC will rule fairly on the merits of the project, not the factor. “They’re going to judge the case on its merits and whether it meets the standards that Missouri has under its statutes. They will ask, ‘Is there a need for the project and is it it in the public interest?’ We have put forth a strong argument that there’s a need.“

While Indiana and Illinois signed onto the project before Missouri, Missouri was always seen as the most integral partner of the project. Lawlor says that belief can cause some to believe Missouri would not get much benefit out of the project, even though Missouri would get roughly 500 MW from wind energy as a result.

“Some folks get distracted this is something going through Missouri, the reality is that this is delivering power to Missouri,” he said. “From day one, it was just going to be a Kansas to Missouri line, but we found the Missouri grid couldn’t take that much power.

“Missouri’s key to this whole thing and we hope and expect we can bring those benefits to the state,” Lawlor said.

A reporter attempted to interview Faughn about his companies’ money troubles. The Missouri Times is headquartered at 129 East High St. in Jefferson City. A reporter found Faughn there at the top of a two-story walkup, inside a darkened room resembling a lounge.

Faughn was standing behind a bar in the room with a laptop computer in front of him. Liquor bottles stood on shelves on the wall behind him. Black and white photos of politicians covered the other walls of the room.

Faughn declined a face-to-face interview. He said he would consider written questions sent by email. Questions were emailed March 17. Faughn acknowledged receiving them March 21, but said he could not respond until next week.

Faughn, the former mayor of Poplar Bluff, launched the Missouri Times in 2013 with former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton. Faughn was Jetton’s former campaign manager. Jetton has since severed ties with the operation.

FERC did show some recalcitrance and at least “appeared” to “withhold” the segregable portions of requested documents “merely to avoid embarrassment or frustrate the requester,” or simply to avoid the time-consuming work of separating information that could be properly withheld from information that could not.

The D.C. Circuit has instructed this court “to consider at least four criteria in determining whether a substantially prevailing FOIA litigant is entitled to attorney’s fees: (1) the public benefit derived from the case; (2) the commercial benefit to the plaintiff; (3) the nature of the plaintiff’s interest in the records; and (4) the reasonableness of the agency’s withholding.”