The Bureau of Land Management Tuesday issued a notice to proceed that clears the way for construction to start this year on the Wyoming-to-Nevada TransWest Express transmission project.
The $3 billion TransWest project is designed to deliver 3,000 MW of wind generation from an affiliated company, Power Company of Wyoming, to California and the Southwest. The transmission and wind developers are Anschutz Corp. subsidiaries.
The 732-mile, 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.
TransWest expects the first stage of its project will be completed in 2027, the company said in a statement. The BLM started reviewing the project in 2008.
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 system. It will deliver renewable energy to southern California municipal utilities, TransWest said in its application to become a “participating transmission owner” with the California Independent System Operator.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the participating transmission owner agreement last month and in February accepted TransWest’s agreement to sell all the capacity on its line to Power Company of Wyoming.
TransWest is buying the project’s high-voltage direct current technology from Siemens Energy.
