Their Own Private Power LIne
Twin Cities Business, April 2008 

MINNEAPOLIS — "If you try to connect ot he grid in Minnesota today in the Buffalo Ridge, MISO [the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator; the organization that controls the region's power grid] is not even going to study your interconnection-do a system-impact study-until 2017.  That's what they quoted last fall," says Ingrid Bjorklund, vice president of government affairs for Chaska-based Outland Renewable Energy, a developer of wind-power projects and supplier of maintenance services for wind farms.  "I'm sure it's even longer now."

New transmission lines proposed by utilities including Xcel Energy and up for review by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission would add transmission capacity in the Buffalo Ridge area by 2013 or 2014.  But that won't help Outland, Bjorklund says.  Because wind developments are queued up with MISO to gain access to transmission, those proposed public lines would benefit the wind projects that have already been in the queue for some time.  Outland has a new project that would go to the back of the line: Plans for a 200-megawatt wind farm that it wants to build in northwestern Iowa. 

The long MISO queue and backlogged megawatts of power generation waiting to be built are one measure of how constrained the transmission system is.  Another is this:  The bottleneck is breeding innovation and risk taking. 

Along with its Iowa wind project, Outland plans to build a privately financed 3,000 megawatt transmission line from Tracy, Minnesota, to Shakopee, at an estimated cost of $225 million.  "

"Our line will ensure that we're able to move our wind," Bjorklund says.  "when a utility builds a transmission line, they are subject to open access under FERC [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission], and then everybody gets in the queue.  Our line insures that our wind projects will move out of the area."

There are a few precedents elsewhere in the country, Bjorklund says, "We have a FERC attorney in D.C., and the first one we became aware of was a line called Sagebrush.  That's in California, and they did a private transmission line and were exempt from open access by FERC.  Because of their status [as a power generator that sells wholesale to utilities], then the transmission is viewed as part of the generation."  There are other qualifying criteria, she adds.  Bjorklund says an arm of Florida Power and Light, a major wind-energy developer, also built a private line in Colorado. 

Given FERC approval, Outland would open its line up to some other wind projects-specfically, projects like its own where local landowners share in the ownership and revenues, also known as CBED, or community-based energy developments.  The company wants to extend theat CBED model to its transmission line as well, not only paying a lease to landowners where the line passes through, but offering them a chance to invest in the line and share in Outland's energy-generation profits. 

Bjorklund says the project is in the early planning stages and exactly how the investments would be structured and exactly where the line would be routed are yet to be determined:  "We've retained an engineering firm [Pinnacle Engineering] that is working on that at this very moment."  Outland will file for a route permit this spring.  Bjorklund says getting it will take about a year:  "Then we have to secure easements, then it's about a two-year construction phase.  The goal is to have it operational by 2012. 

"But then," she adds, "we still have the interconnection issue in the Twin Cities."  Eventually, all routes lead to MISO, which would still require Outland to queue up for permission to connect to the grid in Shakopee, though the queue there is shorter than out in western Minnesota. 

"The MISO queue system is less 'broke' outside the Buffalo Ridge, but still quite 'broke,'" Bjorklund says, adding that the good news is MISO knows it needs to fix it.  "MISO is trying to change its queue process.  No one knows what that's going to result in."  If private financing of transmission is the innovation, interconnection delays are still the risk.

Close Window