Dive Brief:
- Clean Line Energy Partners wants to know more from wind farm developers that might want to feed power into its 750-mile Grain Belt Express transmission line from western Kansas to southwestern Indiana.
- The developer on Monday issued a request "to gather information about generators' demand for the Grain Belt Express [line's] transmission capacity and to collect data that will allow Clean Line to characterize the wind resource and production potential in western Kansas."
- The 600-kV line will cost about $2 billion and be able to transmit 3,500 megawatts of wind power.
- On Friday, Clean Line filed a request at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for negotiated rate authority that would leave it flexibility to maximize returns on the project.
Dive Insight:
The request for information will be the subject of a webinar on Dec. 16. Confidentiality agreements are due Dec. 18 and the deadline for replies to the RFI is Jan. 13. This request calls into question whether the developer of the line, first proposed in 2010, is getting sufficient interest to move ahead.