CapX2020 is a joint initiative of 11 transmission owning utilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin to upgrade and expand the electric transmission grid to ensure continued reliable and affordable service. The five 230 and 345 kV projects provide needed transmission capacity to support new generation outlet, including renewable energy. CapX2020 includes electric cooperatives, municipals and investor-owned utilities. The CapX2020 lines are projected to cost more than $2 billion and cover nearly 800 miles. When discussions and planning activities started in 2004, the institutional environment for planning for large scale transmission expansion was not mature and major issues such as cost allocation and recovery were unresolved. The diverse coalition of CapX2020 utilities, environmental groups, renewable energy developers, regulators and others was able to agree on regulatory reforms that addressed many of the issues at the state level. Meanwhile, MISO, through stakeholder processes was able to address issues related to cost allocation and recovery. Extensive public engagement activities were effective in building support for the projects and allowed for a timely and relatively non-controversial permitting process.  It was during construction that some of the most difficult challenges were encountered. In this session, you will hear some of the details of how these issues were successfully addressed as the projects near completion on schedule and on budget.

In the business of siting electric utility infrastructure, opposition is the norm rather than the exception. While customers typically love an electric utility's product, they almost universally loathe the infrastructure necessary to deliver that product. In this session, we will discuss how to:

Acknowledge a customer's concern

Discern when a customer's concern cannot be resolved

Steer an opponent toward providing constructive input

Be credible

Become unflappable

The Clean Power Link is entirely underwater or underground.

The line will originate at the U.S.-Canadian border and travel approximately 97 miles underwater down Lake Champlain to Benson, Vt., and then be buried along town and state roads and railroad rights-of-way or on land owned by TDI New England for approximately 57 miles to a new converter station to be built in Ludlow, Vt.

The Clean Power Link encountered minimal public resistance in Vermont because of the burial of the line.

“It is well recognized in the industry that siting is one of the most difficult facets of building new energy infrastructure,” said Susan Schibanoff with Responsible Energy Action. “NECPL dealt with that issue first by creating solid community and political support with a fully buried line. It has clearly paid off in terms of the record speed with which they have moved ahead.”

Bowring, Gates’ Consultant Spar over PJM Traders’ Obligations on Loopholes

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — To shake or not to shake the Money Tree?

That was the question Independent Market Monitor Joe Bowring posed during his Year in Review presentation at PJM’s Annual Meeting last week, setting off a lively debate with one of the consultants that Richard and Kevin Gates, enlisted in their high profile defense against market manipulation allegations.

“If the rules are imperfect, is it OK to do anything not explicitly prohibited?” Bowring asked.

He quickly provided his own answer. “It is not permissible,” he said, citing what he called the “duty” of market participants to inform RTO officials and federal regulators of such “money trees.”

The Committee expected the mayor to give an opening statement and then JCP&L would give their presentation, followed by a question-and-answer period. A committee member said that it turned out to be a JCP&L public relations presentation, and the company made no effort to discuss the problems and possible solutions.

The chief planning official for PJM Interconnection Inc., the grid operator, said in a letter to New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel that continued operations of the B.L. England power station in Cape May County would not create reliability problems, but that the plant's shutdown would.

"Recent media statements attributed to you about reliability and cost impacts associated with the B.L. England generating units' remaining in service are based on a misunderstanding of PJM Interconnection's planning process," Steven R. Herling, PJM's vice president of planning, wrote Thursday to Tittel.

"Our transmission-planning process is very complex, dynamic, and - as a consequence - can be misunderstood," Herling said in his letter to Tittel. "I would have been very happy to explain the process and underlying facts to help you avoid confusion, and would be willing to clarify PJM's study results at any time."

“I have no doubt, in the long run, we need power and we need power transmission lines, and they’re going to go somewhere,” said Don McKay, general manager of Tyrol Basin Ski and Snowboard Area.

“Nothing here is very negotiable,” said McKay, who also is a Vermont town supervisor.

Robert and Danuta Pyzalski said it was too preliminary to get answers about their town of Middleton home, in the study area.

“My concern is how close the lines would be to residential areas,” Robert Pyzalski said. “To say there would be no danger would be naive.”

Members of a new resident-led work group created to grapple with Dominion Virginia Power’s plans to run a transmission line through Alexandria did not mince words following the utility’s first presentation on the project.

“I’m just looking at statements here with nothing to back them up.”

Both officials and work group members are growing more suspicious as Dominion’s application date creeps closer.

“There’s some healthy skepticism,” Smedberg said. “While Dominion says they don’t know what a final route would be, many people in the community find that a little hard to believe. They know exactly what they want to do and have known for a while.”

With permits to build an underwater and underground power line from the Canadian border to New York City all but fully in hand, the developer is turning its attention to a similar proposal for a 1,000-megawatt power line that would run down Lake Champlain and then across Vermont to feed the New England electric grid.

Once out of the water all the cable will be laid in public rights of way and the company TDI New England has been working with the state of Vermont and local communities along the route on the minutiae: Everything from how to be sure the under-road conduits don’t worsen spring frost heaves to how the cables cross beneath bridges or how to ensure that once the cables are buried they aren’t disturbed.

Benson Selectboard member Sue Janssen said TDI New England has worked hard to meet the concerns of her community of just over 1,000. They are even paying a lawyer of the town’s choosing to represent the community in the detailed discussions that are coming.

“I have the impression if we’d said we wanted our dirt roads painted pink they’d have done it,” she said.

So far there has been no significant opposition to TDI New England’s major electrical infrastructure project such as has faced plans to build ridge-top industrial wind projects, extend a natural gas power line from the Burlington area to Rutland or build a 180-mile above-ground power line between the Canadian border and northern New Hampshire.

“I think that one of the key differentiators of other proposed projects is that we are all buried,” said TDI New England CEO Donald Jessome.

Matt Valle’s solution to energy shortages in Eastern Massachusetts eschews the usual approach of running miles of new transmission lines on unsightly towers. Instead, Valle proposes to bury 50 miles of high-power cable in the ocean floor, using an underwater robot that resembles a lunar rover.

The robot would dig a trench 4 to 6 feet deep in an arc from Salisbury to Lynn for a power line that would bring 520 megawatts of electricity from the Seabrook generating station into Greater Boston.

If approved, the so-called SeaLink line would be the first underwater transmission line in Massachusetts, and Valle argued that it would be more reliable than high-voltage lines that are exposed to New England weather.

“It’s a buried system. It is protected against extreme weather — high winds, flooding, icing,” said Valle, president of New Hampshire Transmission, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power companies.

But there is one major drawback: With a price tag of more than $1 billion, SeaLink looks on paper to cost about $350 million more than a competing project, which includes a new 25-mile transmission line running from Londonderry, N.H., to Tewksbury, as well as upgrades to the existing high-voltage power network.

“Ours is the most cost-effective solution. That’s a fact,” said Rudy Wynter, president of the transmission business at National Grid, which is partnering with Northeast Utilities on the project. It would feature a combination of high-voltage 115 kV lines and extra-high-voltage 345 kV lines constructed on rights of way that are already held by the two companies.

supports policies that will modernize the nation’s electric power network and unlock clean energy and economic opportunities across the country. Smart state and federal policies that improve the way the grid is developed, planned, and paid for will help it become a more robust, reliable, and secure network that supports expansion of renewable energy, competitive power markets, energy efficiency, and lower costs for consumers. The backbone of a clean electricity system and a strong economy is a resilient and reliable transmission grid.

I will this night,
In several hands, in at his windows throw,
As if they came from several citizens,
Writings all tending to the great opinion       
That Rome holds of his name; wherein obscurely  
Caesar's ambition shall be glanced at:    
 And after this let Caesar seat him sure;    
 For we will shake him, or worse days endure.