Anschutz's TransWest project applies to join CAISO in bid to send wind power from Wyoming to California

Dive Brief:

TransWest Express, an Anschutz Corp. subsidiary, is seeking to put its planned Wyoming-to-Nevada power line, which has the same name, under the control of the California Independent System Operator, the company said Monday.
The 732-mile transmission project is designed to deliver wind power in Wyoming to load serving entities in the West, mainly in California, but without increasing CAISO’s transmission access charge, which the grid operator levies on customers to meet its revenue needs, according to an application at CAISO.
“It makes both technical and commercial sense for the operation of the [TransWest] project to be handled by the California ISO,” Roxane Perruso, TransWest’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Dive Insight:

The bi-directional TransWest Express project is slated to run from Sinclair, Wyoming, to the Eldorado substation in southern Nevada in three segments. The project includes a 3,000-MW segment between Wyoming and Utah and two 1,500-MW segments from Utah to south of Las Vegas.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February accepted TransWest’s agreement to sell all the capacity on the line to Power Company of Wyoming, an affiliated company developing a 3,000-MW wind farm.

In Delta, Utah, the line is slated to interconnect to the Intermountain Power Agency’s Intermountain Power Project 345-kV switchyard, enabling the project to interconnect with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s balancing authority area and deliver renewable energy to southern California municipal utilities, TransWest said in its application with CAISO.

TransWest has acquired all needed major permits and has secured all the easements and authorizations it needs to build on private lands, according to the application.

TransWest said it expects it can bring online the 1,500-MW segments between Wyoming and Utah and Utah and Nevada in 2026.

Under a proposed contractual arrangement, TransWest would become CAISO’s first subscriber participating transmission owner, or SPTO, according to the company.

TransWest said it would be paid for long-term firm transmission service from its subscribers and for other transmission services under a separate wheeling charge. In the proposed SPTO model, the TransWest project will become part of CAISO’s network without increasing the grid operator’s transmission access charge, according to the company.

CAISO is holding a stakeholder call on the TransWest application and the proposed subscriber participating transmission owner model on Aug. 1. Comments on the presentation and discussion are due on Aug. 15.